The rare earth vanadates have long been studied for their interesting magnetic
properties and cooperative Jahn–Teller distortions. In the main, most of
this work has been carried out at temperatures down to 1 K or so (e.g. Gehring
and Gehring 1975). In this review NMRON, and other low temperature experiments
in the mK regime, are presented and discussed. It will be argued that the low
temperature properties of these compounds are just as interesting as their
high temperature counterparts. In general, the nuclear and electronic
wavefunctions become intermixed, leading to a variety of interesting physical
effects, such as enhanced nuclear magnetism, quadrupolar induced intermediate
state re-orientation etc. These effects have, in turn, spawned new methods for
the investigation of magnetic structures, and thermometric detection of NMR
both by internal and external thermometers. Several experiments are suggested,
including magnetic refrigeration, Mössbauer, EPR in the ≈30 GHz range,
in addition to thermometric NMR and NMRON.