Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 208, 99-106 (2012)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01610-7

Regular Article

Advances in the understanding of multiferroics through soft X-ray diffraction

¹ Department of Physics, University of Durham, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
² Department of Condensed Matter Physics & Materials Science, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, 11973-5000, USA
³ Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK
⁴ ISIS Facility, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory – STFC, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, UK
⁵ Diamond Light Source Ltd., Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0DE, UK

^a e-mail: p.d.hatton@dur.ac.uk

Received: 5 October 2011
Revised: 23 March 2012
Published online: 15 June 2012

Abstract

The magneto-electric multiferroic TbMn₂O₅ has a complex magnetic structure in three different magnetically ordered phases. We have determined the nature of the induced magnetic order on the oxygen sites in the commensurate magnetic phase through full linear X-ray polarisation analysis at the oxygen K edge. This has been achieved rotating the linear polarisation of the incident beam at the source, and using multilayers to analyse the polarisation state of the scattered X-ray beam. We have confirmed that the anisotropy of the magnetic scattering at the oxygen edge is consistent with the anisotropy of the manganese magnetic structure.