Investigating the occurrence of magnetic order in strained thin films of Pr_0.5Ca_0.5MnO₃ by muon spin relaxation

¹  Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden University - Leiden, The Netherlands, EU
²  Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research and International Center for Materials Physics, Chinese Academic of Science - 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang 110016, PRC
³  Laboratory for Muon Spin Spectroscopy, Paul Scherrer Institute - CH-5232 Villigen PSI, Switzerland

Corresponding author: aarts@physics.leidenuniv.nl

Received: 28 March 2008
Accepted: 30 June 2008

Abstract

We measured the antiferromagnetic transition temperature T_N in a thin film (25 nm) of Pr_0.5Ca_0.5MnO₃ (PCMO) on SrTiO₃ (STO), which also shows charge and orbital order. The tensile strain was shown earlier to yield a considerable increase of the charge order temperature. Here we measure the spin depolarization rate of low-energy muons, and find that the onset of magnetic order in such a strained film is at the same temperature as T_N of the bulk material, from which we infer that strain has not changed the magnetic order. This is in very good agreement with the general theoretical understanding of the physics of manganites at half-filling.