Assessing the occurrence of a nematic order in the high temperature phase of magnetite (Fe3O4)

Very recently, it was proposed that the high temperature structure of magnetite includes a fluctuating nematic order of charges, spins and orbitals. This kind of order,
borrowed from the liquid crystals phase transitions, has been invoked to play a fundamental role in the understanding of superconductivity and, more generally, in the
physics of strongly correlated electron systems. An electronic nematic phase violates the rotational symmetry of the lattice while preserving the inversion and the
translational symmetries. In the case of magnetite, this means that the space group cannot be treated, strictly speaking, as cubic and therefore some symmetry
conditions are violated. In this proposal we want to carry out resonant and non-resonant diffraction experiments in magnetite as a function of temperature in view of
testing these new ideas on the presence of an electronic nematic phase in the ferrimagnetic phase of magnetite.