English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The orbital, which represents the shape of the electron cloud, very oftenstrongly influences the manifestation of various exotic phenomena, e.g.,magnetism, metal-insulator transition, colossal magnetoresistance,unconventional superconductivity etc. in solid-state systems. The observationof the antiferromagnetism in $RE$TiO$_3$ ($RE$=rare earth) series has beenpuzzling since the celebrated Kugel-Khomskii model of spin-orbital superexchange predicts ferromagnetism in an orbitally degenerate $d^1$ systems.Further, the existence of the orbitally ordered vs. orbital liquid phase inboth antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic phase have been unsettled issues thusfar. To address these long-standing questions, we investigate singlecrystalline film of PrTiO$_3$. Our synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurementsconfirm the retention of bulk-like orthorhombic ($D_{2h}$) symmetry in the thinfilm geometry. We observe similar X-ray linear dichroism signal in bothparamagnetic and antiferromagnetic phase, which can be accounted by ferroorbital ordering (FOO). While the presence of $D_{2h}$ crystal field does notguarantee lifting of orbital degeneracy always, we find it to be strong enoughin these rare-earth titanates, leading to the FOO state. Thus, our workdemonstrates the orthorhombic distortion is the driving force for the orbitalordering of antiferromagnetic $RE$TiO$_3$.

Orthorhombic distortion drives orbital ordering in an antiferromagnetic 3$d^1$ Mott insulator