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Updated: May 25, 2026

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses
Published on: June 7, 2018
Coupling of replicate order-parameters in incommensurate multiferroics
Bruno Mettout1, Pierre Tolédano
1Laboratory of Physics of Complex Systems, University of Picardie, Amiens, France.
Abstract:
The specific properties of incommensurate multiferroic phases resulting from the coupling of order-parameter replicates are worked out using the illustrative example of iron vanadate. The phase difference between the order-parameter copies induces an additional broken symmetry phase corresponding to the lowest symmetry of the system and varies critically at the transition to the multiferroic phase. It reflects the temperature dependence of the angle between paired spins in the antiferromagnetic spiral structure. Expressing the transition order-parameters in terms of spin-density waves allows us to show that isotropic exchange interactions contribute to the stabilization of the ferroelectric phase.
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