Dynamics of the iron spins in superconducting YBa2(Cu(1-x)Fe(x))O7

Abstract

The dynamics of the iron spins in YBa2(Cu(1-x)Fe(x))3O7 alloys (0 = to or less than 0.12) was studied by the means of inelastic neutron scattering. Measurements were performed using the time of flight technique with an excellent resolution of 50 micro eV, in a temperature range of 1.8 to 300 K. The doped samples show an elastic and a quasielastic intensity strongly varying with temperature. A spin glass like freezing is revealed at low temperature by a sudden decrease of the quasielastic intensity, an increase of the elastic or resolution limited intensity and a minimum in the quasielastic width. The freezing temperature corresponds to the one already determinated by a magnetic splitting in Mossbauer experiments. Above freezing, the occurrence of superconductivity slightly modifies the characteristics of the spin relaxation in the paramagnetic state, as shown by measurements in two x = 0.06 samples. In the whole temperature range of measurement, the dependence of the quasielastic intensity with the scattering vector q, mainly reflects the variation of the Iron form factor, which shows that the spins are almost uncorrelated