Erratum: Lattice Dynamics of EuO: Evidence for Giant Spin-Phonon Coupling [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 , 185501 (2016)]

Abstract

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.185501.

Phonon confinement and spin-phonon coupling in tensile-strained ultrathin EuO films

“…18,19 The experimental results, supported by first-principles theory, uncovered a giant and highly anisotropic spin-phonon coupling induced by the spin dynamics slightly above and well below the T C in bulk EuO. 20,21 Previous lattice dynamics studies of surfaces, thin films, interfaces, and multilayers revealed drastic modifications of their phonon density of states (PDOS) with respect to the bulk counterparts with the main features being an enhancement of the number of phonon states at low and high energy and suppression and shift of the peaks. [22][23][24][25][26][27] In EuO, such phonon anomalies, combined with the strong interaction between spins and lattice vibrations could potentially increase the probability for undesired spin flips thus reducing the degree of spin polarization along certain crystallographic directions.…”

“…This figure demonstrates that the PDOS of sample S1 exhibits the main features of bulk EuO, 20 namely two peaks at 11 and 17 meV and a high energy cut-off around 22 meV. The solid/ red line marks the calculated PDOS of a strain-free EuO crystal 20 convoluted with the damped harmonic oscillator (DHO) function 40 with a quality factor Q = 8. This function accounts remarkably well for the phonon lifetime broadening that arises from strain-relaxation induced distribution of interatomic distances.…”

“…In all measurements the X-ray beam was oriented along the EuO[100] direction that revealed the giant spin-phonon interaction in bulk EuO. 20 The 151 Eu-partial PDOS was obtained from the experimental data in a quasi-harmonic approximation using a formalism described elsewhere. 34 3 First-principles calculations First-principles theory was applied to investigate the lattice dynamics of the EuO(001) surface.…”

“…Employing inelastic X-ray scattering and nuclear inelastic scattering, unusually strong and highly anisotropic spin-phonon coupling has been discovered in a strain-free 100 nm thick EuO(001) film deposited on YSZ(001). 20,21 This effect manifests itself in a five-fold increase of the line-width of the transverse acoustic phonon branch along the Γ-X direction of the Brillouin zone in the vicinity and below the T C . Although the effect on the PDOS is less pronounced due to the momentum averaging, a broadening reaching 17% of the acoustic peak at 11 meV was measured along the EuO[100] direction at 30 K compared to the room-temperature PDOS.…”

“…Fig. 6(a) shows the Eu-partial PDOS of samples S4-S6 obtained from the experiment performed at 298 K and 30 K. Similarly to the PDOS of S1, the phonon spectrum of S4 exhibits the main features of bulk EuO, 20 namely two peaks at 11 and 17 meV and a high energy cut-off around 22 meV. The ab initio calculated PDOS of a strain-free EuO crystal convoluted with the DHO function with Q = 8 (solid line) is fully consistent with the experimental data.…”