Thermal expansion and pressure effect in MnWO4

MnWO4 has attracted attention because of its ferroelectric property induced by frustrated helical spin order. Strong spin-lattice interaction is necessary to explain ferroelectricity associated with this type of magnetic order.We have conducted thermal expansion measurements along the a, b, c axes revealing the existence of strong anisotropic lattice anomalies at T1=7.8 K, the temperature of the magnetic lock-in transition into a commensurate low-temperature (reentrant paraelectric) phase. The effect of hydrostatic pressure up to 1.8 GPa on the FE phase is investigated by measuring the dielectric constant and the FE polarization. The low- temperature commensurate and paraelectric phase is stabilized and the stability range of the ferroelectric phase is diminished under pressure.Comment: 2 pages, 3 figures. SCES conference proceedings, houston, TX, 2007. to be published in Physica

Symmetry Aspects in Nonrelativistic Multi-Scalar Field Models and Application to a Coupled Two-Species Dilute Bose Gas

We discuss unusual aspects of symmetry that can happen due to entropic effects in the context of multi-scalar field theories at finite temperature. We present their consequences, in special, for the case of nonrelativistic models of hard core spheres. We show that for nonrelativistic models phenomena like inverse symmetry breaking and symmetry non-restoration cannot take place, but a reentrant phase at high temperatures is shown to be possible for some region of parameters. We then develop a model of interest in studies of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases and discuss about its phase transition patterns. In this application to a Bose-Einstein condensation model, however, no reentrant phases are found.Comment: 8 pages, 1 eps figure, IOP style. Based on a talk given by R. O. Ramos at the QFEXT05 workshop, Barcelona, Spain, September 5-9, 2005. One reference was update