Spectroscopic studies of the ferroelectric and magnetic phase transitions in multiferroic Sr1-xBaxMnO3

Dielectric response of perovskite Sr1-xBaxMnO3 (x = 0.43 and 0.45) ceramics was investigated using microwave, THz and infrared spectroscopic techniques in order to study the ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic phase transitions with critical temperatures TC ≈ 350 K and TN ≈ 200 K, respectively. The two lowest-frequency polar phonons are overdamped above TN and they exhibit pronounced softening on heating towards TC. Nevertheless, permittivity ε' in the THz range shows only a small anomaly at TC because the phonon contribution to ε' is rather small. The phonons are coupled with a central mode which provides the main contribution to the dielectric anomaly at TC. Thus, the ferroelectric phase transition has characteristics of a crossover from displacive to order-disorder type. At the same time, the intrinsic THz central peak is partially screened by conductivity and related Maxwell-Wagner relaxation, which dominates the microwave and lower-frequency spectra. Below TN, the ferroelectric distortion markedly decreases, which has an influence on the frequencies of both the central and soft modes. Therefore, ε' in the THz range increases at TN on cooling. In spite of the strong spin-phonon coupling near TN, surprisingly no magnetodielectric effect was observed in the THz spectra upon applying magnetic field of up to 7 T, which is in contradiction with the theoretically expected huge magnetoelectric coupling. We explain this fact as due to the insensitivity of TN to magnetic field.