Neutron powder diffraction studies on quasi two-dimensional corrugated layered oxides Ba4Mn3O10 and Sr4Mn3O10

Ba4Mn3O10 and Sr4Mn3O10 crystallize in an orthorhombic crystal structure consisting of corrugated layers containing Mn3O12 polyhedra. The magnetic susceptibility consists of a broad hump-like feature around 180 K indicating the presence of low dimensional magnetic correlation. Recently, we studied the Ru counterpart, Ba4Ru3O10 using neutron scattering and muSR technique and observed the absence of any magnetic moment at one of the two Ru site which is found to be connected to the significant crystal-field effect. Inspired from this result we already performed inelastic neutron scattering on the proposed compounds. This observation clearly indicates that the orbital effect is playing a crucial role in Ba4Mn3O10 and Sr4Mn3O10. Hence, to explore the true magnetic structure is very important and necessary to understand the physics behind the complex magnetic ground state in these compounds.