Magnons and electromagnons in a spin-lattice-coupled frustrated magnet CuFeO as seen via inelastic neutron scattering

Nakajima, Taro*; Suno, Azusa*; Mitsuda, Setsuo*; Terada, Noriki*; Kimura, Shojiro*; Kaneko, Koji   ; Yamauchi, Hiroki   

We have investigated spin-wave excitations in a four-sublattice (4SL) magnetic ground state of a frustrated magnet CuFeO, in which "electromagnon" excitation has been discovered by recent terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. We have performed high-energy-resolution inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the 4SL phase, resolving fine structures of the lower-energy spin-wave branch near the zone center. We have developed a model Hamiltonian to describe the spin-wave excitations. The determined Hamiltonian parameters have successfully reproduced the spin-wave dispersion relations and intensity maps obtained in the inelastic neutron scattering measurements. The results of the spin-wave analysis have also revealed physical pictures of the magnon and electromagnon modes in the 4SL phase, suggesting that collinear and noncollinear characters of the two spin-wave modes are the keys to understand the dynamical coupling between the spins and electric dipole moments in this system.