Polaronic effect in the x-ray absorption spectra of La1-x Ca x MnO3 manganites

S W Huang; Y T Liu; J M Lee; J M Chen; J F Lee; R W Schoenlein; Y-D Chuang; J-Y Lin

doi:10.1088/1361-648X/ab05a2

Polaronic effect in the x-ray absorption spectra of La_1-x Ca _x MnO₃ manganites

J Phys Condens Matter. 2019 May 15;31(19):195601. doi: 10.1088/1361-648X/ab05a2. Epub 2019 Mar 8.

Authors

S W Huang¹, Y T Liu, J M Lee, J M Chen, J F Lee, R W Schoenlein, Y-D Chuang, J-Y Lin

Affiliation

¹ MAX IV Laboratory, Lund University, PO Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden. Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States of America. Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States of America.

PMID: 30848247
DOI: 10.1088/1361-648X/ab05a2

Abstract

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is performed to study changes in the electronic structures of colossal magnetoresistance (CMR) and charged ordered (CO) La_1-x Ca _x MnO₃ manganites with respect to temperature. The pre-edge features in O and Mn K-edge XAS spectra, which are highly sensitive to the local distortion of MnO₆ octahedral, exhibit contrasting temperature dependence between CMR and CO samples. The seemingly counter-intuitive XAS temperature dependence can be reconciled in the context of polarons. These results help identify the most relevant orbital states associated with polarons and highlight the crucial role played by polarons in understanding the electronic structures of manganites.