Abstract
New neutron scattering studies were made on holmium phosphide (HoP) in order to resolve existing ambiguities. Neutron-diffraction investigations were performed on single-crystal and powdered samples of HoP in external fields up to 40 kOe as well as in zero field. In addition to obtaining phase diagrams, we have determined that the easy directions of magnetization are 〈100〉 in the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic states. Depending on the history of the samples, structural defects presumably of Schottky type tend to shorten the range of magnetic order. Inelastic neutron scattering was used to measure the magnetic excitation spectrum of HoP in the flopside phase. Four spin-wave branches were found which are almost independent of wave vector. The results are analyzed in terms of a mean-field Hamiltonian containing a crystal field and the effects of bilinear and quadrupolar pair interactions. On the basis of the resulting model parameters, we are able to explain the salient features of the magnetic behavior of HoP, in particular, the appearance of first the ferromagnetic and then the flopside phases, and the variations with fields of the paramagnetic-flopside transitions and the flopside-ferromagnetic transitions.
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