Devil's flower resulting from a successive charge disproportionation of NaVO; Understanding of the details of the Ising spin and the competitive interactions which made the devil's flower bloom

Owada, Kenji; Fujii, Yasuhiko; Muraoka, Jiro*; Nakao, Hironori*; Murakami, Yoichi*; Noda, Yukio*; Osumi, Hiroyuki*; Ikeda, Naoshi*; Shobu, Takahisa  ; Isobe, Masahiko*; Ueda, Yutaka*

Devil's flower has been found in a temperature-pressure phase diagram of NaVO, which shows a charge disproportionation (CD) at ambient pressure. By a complementary use of an X-ray structural analysis and a resonant X-ray diffraction, which is sensitive to CD, we have investigated the structural relationship between two ground states appeared in lower and higher pressure regions including the charge arrangements. It has been clarified that two equivalent types of charge arrangement in CD correspond to the Ising variable in NaVO. The atomic shifts are regarded as linearly coupled to the Ising spins. The results lead us to the conclusion that it is the first time that the devil's flower blooms in a charge-disproportionation system. The results also lead us to a hypothesis that the competitive interactions between a Ising spins may result from the Ising spin-phonon coupling.