A Review of the Low Temperature Properties of the Rare Earth Vanadates

Abstract

The rare earth vanadates have long been studied for their interesting magnetic properties and cooperative Jahn–Teller distortions. In the main, most of this work has been carried out at temperatures down to 1 K or so (e.g. Gehring and Gehring 1975). In this review NMRON, and other low temperature experiments in the mK regime, are presented and discussed. It will be argued that the low temperature properties of these compounds are just as interesting as their high temperature counterparts. In general, the nuclear and electronic wavefunctions become intermixed, leading to a variety of interesting physical effects, such as enhanced nuclear magnetism, quadrupolar induced intermediate state re-orientation etc. These effects have, in turn, spawned new methods for the investigation of magnetic structures, and thermometric detection of NMR both by internal and external thermometers. Several experiments are suggested, including magnetic refrigeration, Mössbauer, EPR in the ≈30 GHz range, in addition to thermometric NMR and NMRON.