Magnetic influence on the frequency of the soft-phonon mode in the incipient ferroelectric EuTiO3

Abstract

The dielectric constant of the incipient ferroelectric EuTiO$_3$ exhibits a sharp decrease at about 5.5K, at which temperature antiferromagnetic ordering of the Eu spins simultaneously appears, indicating coupling between the magnetism and dielectric properties. This may be attributed to the modification of the soft-phonon mode, $T_{1\mu}$, which is the main contribution to the large dielectric constant, by the Eu spins(7$\mu_B$ per Eu). By adding the coupling term between the magnetic and electrical subsystems as $ -g\sum\limits_l {\sum\limits_{< {i,j}} {q_l^2}} \overrightarrow {S_i} \cdot \overrightarrow {S_j} $ we show that the variation of the frequency of soft-phonon mode depends on the spin correlation between the nearest neighbors Eu spins and is substantially changed under a magnetic field.