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Subjects NMR Studies of Orbital States in Transition Metal Oxides
Representative researcher Nagoya University    Masayuki ITOH
Orbital degrees of freedom have attracted much attention in the physics of 3d transition metal oxides. In particular a quantum effect is one of the recent important topics in orbital physics. Electron systems with t2g degenerate orbitals are expected to have strong quantum effect, because the Jahn-Tellar coupling for t2g orbitals is weaker than for the eg orbitals. One of the most investigated t2g systems is RTiO3 (R= Y and La). YTiO3 is a ferromagnet with Tc~30 K, whereas LaTiO3 is an antiferromagnet with TN~150 K. In this study we have studied orbital states in YTiO3 and LaTiO3 by means of NMR. We found that the NMR spectra in a single crystal of YTiO3 can be explained if the 3d electron quadrupole moment is reduced from the expected value of the orbital ordering model based on the Hartree-Fock and GGA band calculations. This reduction is considered to come from the quantum fluctuation in the t2g orbitals. We have also in LaTiO3 examined the Ti NMR spectra based on the orbital liquid and ordering models. We showed that there is the large 3d electron quadrupole moment, indicating that the orbital liquid model is inappropriate. The NMR spectra are explained by the orbital ordering model as (dxy+dyz+dzx)/√3 due to a crystal field effect.