Chiral-like critical behavior in the antiferromagnet cobalt glycerolate

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Jul 6;99(1):017202. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.017202. Epub 2007 Jul 3.

Abstract

Critical exponents closely matching those of the N=2 chiral universality class have been obtained for the layered magnetic system cobalt glycerolate using muon spin relaxation. This class was originally introduced to represent geometrically frustrated triangular stacked-layer XY magnets with chiral noncollinear spin structures. Since the present magnetic system is a canted XY system without geometrical frustration or chiral degeneracy, the results indicate that the order parameter for canting in this system plays a similar role to the chiral order parameter in the geometrically frustrated systems, strongly suggesting that both types of noncollinear system share the same universality class.