Neutron scattering study on the magnetic and lattice structures of EuCo2Al9

Triangular-lattice antiferromagnet (TLAF) exhibits a rich variety of physics. A symbolic quantum effect predicted for TLAF is that magnetization is quantized at one-third of the saturation magnetization Ms in magnetic fields, which suggested the magnetic structure as a up-up-down phase. A number of theoretical approaches for explaining the quantum mechanism of the Ms/3 plateau have been proposed. In contrast, the progress of experimental research is relatively slow due to the limitation of material preparation. Recently, TLAF EuCo2Al9 single crystal has been synthesized and exhibit exotic physical phenomena, such as the existing of two consecutive magnetic transitions and fractional magnetization platform. We propose to study the structure information in EuCo2Al9, which will help us better understand the physical mechanism behind interesting macroscopic phenomenon.