Fluctuation Effects on the Quadrupolar Ordering in Magnetic Field

Abstract

Effects of magnetic field on the quadrupolar ordering are investigated with inclusion of fluctuation of order parameters. For the simplest model with the nearest-neighbor quadrupolar interaction, the transition temperature and the specific heat are derived by the use of the recently proposed effective medium theory. It is shown that magnetic field H has two competing effects on the quadrupolar ordering; one is to encourage the ordering by suppressing the fluctuation among different components of order parameters, and the other is to block the ordering as in antiferromagnets. The former is found to be of order H^2 and the latter of order H^4. Hence the fluctuation is suppressed for weak fields, and the transition temperature increases with magnetic field. The fluctuation effect is so strong that the entropy released at the quadrupolar ordering is only about half of the full value ln 4 even without the Kondo effect.