Observations of the novel magnetic correlations in the Y doping dipolar spin ice HoYTiO

Chang, L.-J.; Su, Y.*; Kao, Y.-J.*; Chou, Y. Z.*; Mittal, R.*; Schneider, H.*; Brueckel, T.*; Balakrishnan, G.*; Lees, M. R.*

Diffuse polarized neutron scatterings have been carried out on the pyrochlore spin ice HoYTiO (x = 0, 0.3 and 1) single crystals to investigate the doping effects and anisotropy of spin correlations in the system. The crystals were aligned in the (1-10) orientation to coincide with the direction of neutron polarization. The spin flip diffuse scattering (i.e. the in-plane component) reveals an anomalous crossover in the spin correlations from the nearest-neighbor spin ice correlation to a typical dipolar spin ice correlation as the temperature is reduced for all the samples. A signature of strong antiferromagnetic correlation is observed in the non-spin flip channel (i.e. the out-of-plane component), at the same temperatures where the dipolar spin ice correlation appears in the spin flip channel.