1 research outputs found
Spontaneous strain due to ferroquadrupolar ordering in UCuSn
The ternary uranium compound UCuSn with a hexagonal ZrPtAl-type
structure shows a phase transition at 16 K. We reported previously that huge
lattice-softening is accompanied by the phase transition, which originates from
ferroquadrupolar ordering of the ground state non-Kramers doublet . A
macroscopic strain, which is expected to emerge spontaneously, was not detected
by powder X-ray diffraction in the temperature range between 4.2 and 300 K. To
search the spontaneous strain, we have carried out thermal expansion
measurements on a single-crystalline sample along the , and axes
using a capacitance technique with the resolution of . In the present
experiment, we found the spontaneous strain which couples to
the ground state doublet . The effect of uniaxial pressure along the
, and axes on the transition temperature is also discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.