Effects of pressure on the magnetic-structural and Griffiths-like transitions in Dy5Si3Ge

Under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0 (CC-BY).-- et al.
Magnetization studies have been performed on a polycrystalline sample of Dy5Si3Ge as a function of an applied magnetic field (up to 50 kOe) and hydrostatic pressure (up to 10 kbar) in the 5-300 K temperature range. The anomalous behavior of the magnetic susceptibility indicates that a Griffiths-like phase exists at low magnetic fields and pressures up to 10 kbar. We present evidence that the high-temperature second-order ferromagnetic transition can be coupled with the low-temperature first-order crystallographic transformation into a single first-order magnetic-crystallographic transformation using a magnetic field and hydrostatic pressure as tuning parameters. The effect of pressure on the Griffiths-like phase is reported and analyzed in the framework of the complex competition between the interslab and intraslab magnetic interactions. © 2013 American Physical Society.
Work at the University of Zaragoza is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science (MAT2011-27553-C02, MAT2011-27573-C04) and Spanish DGA (Grant No. E26). Work at the Ames Laboratory is supported by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division of the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy. Ames Laboratory is operated by Iowa State University of Science and Technology for the US Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-07CH11358.