High field magnetic anisotropy in praseodymium gallium garnet at low temperatures

Abstract

In this paper, with the consideration of crystal field and exchange interaction between the rare-earth Pr 3+ ions, the magnetic anisotropy in praseodymium gallium garnet (PrGaG) in high magnetic fields and at low temperatures is theoretically analyzed. A set of relatively suitable CF parameters is obtained by studying the influence of the variations of nine CF parameters on the magnetization. However, only taking crystal field effect into account, theoretical calculations indicate that the experiments cannot be excellently interpreted. Then, the exchange interaction between Pr 3+ ion, which can be described as an effective exchange field H v = vM = vχH e = ηH e , is further considered. On the other hand, by evaluating the variation of the parameter η with the magnetic fields, our theory implies that PrGaG exhibits ferrimagnetic ordering at low temperatures, and the exchange interaction in PrGaG displays obvious anisotropy. Also, the theoretical data show better agreements with the experimental results.