Publication

Journal	Phzsical Review B
Volume (Issue)	95(10)
Page(s)	104412-1 - 104412-9
Title of proceedings	Phzsical Review B
DOI	10.1103/physrevb.95.104412

Multiferroic orthorhombic o-LuMnO3 exhibits large ferroelectric polarization induced by an E-type magnetic order. Recently, the E-type magnetic phase in LuMnO3 was proposed to feature magnetic moments tilted away from the collinear ordering. We employed neutron diffraction to determine the symmetry of the magnetic order in o-LuMnO3. We observed that below TN = 39 K, the Mn3+ spins order into an incommensurate amplitudemodulated phase that obeys the Pbnm crystal symmetry and is paraelectric. The incommensurate phase locks into a commensurate phase at TC = 35.5 K described by a fully antiferromagnetic and noncollinear E-type order. This noncollinear E-type ordering breaks the spatial inversion symmetry and induces a spontaneous polarization at TC. At T = 2 K, an appreciably large electric polarization was observed similar to that of other orthorhombic manganites featuring E-type magnetic order.We also present a Pbnm symmetry-allowed Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction that explains the noncollinear E-type order in the commensurate phase. These results are in qualitative agreement with the type of distortions from collinear E-type antiferromagnetic order found using Monte Carlo simulation for rare-earth manganites [M. Mochizuki et al., Phys. Rev. B 84, 144409 (2011)].