Importance of stacking to the collinear magnetic phases of the geometrically frustrated antiferromagnet CuFeO2

Abstract

The correct stacking of hexagonal layers is used to obtain accurate estimates for the exchange and anisotropy parameters of the geometrically-frustrated antiferromagnet CuFeO2. Those parameters are highly constrained by the stability of a collinear metamagnetic phase between fields of 13.5 and 20 T. Constrained fits of the spin-wave frequencies of the collinear ""## phase below 7 T are used to determine the magnetic unit cell of the metamagnetic """## phase, which contains two hexagonal layers and 10 Fe3+ ions. PACS numbers: 75.30.Ds, 75.50.Ee, 61.12.-q