Observation of competing interactions and field-induced ferromagnetism in noncentrosymmetric cubic Nd₃Te₄ lattice

Abstract

Unconventional magnetism is key to advancement in a variety of spintronic applications and thus needs to be explored in new materials. Here, we report the in-depth magnetic studies of noncen- trosymmetric Nd3Te4 and findings support the existence of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in addition to symmetric exchange interaction among the moments. The large magnetic irreversibility with negative magnetization in M (T ) data and associated first-order magnetic transition in isother- mal magnetization data suggest the competing interactions resulting in multiple magnetic phases. The gradual evolution of magnetic texture has been probed by changes in the magnetization entropy having interesting characteristics like the inverse magnetocaloric effect. Most importantly, we have probed the existing nontrivial magnetic phase under a low applied magnetic field by ac-χ(T, H) and dc magnetization (M − H) data, having the same critical field in both measurements. The existence of multiple magnetic phases which are interconnected through first-order field-induced magnetic phase transitions have been probed at low field. The transition from paramagnetic to field-induced state for larger applied fields follows a second-order.