Springer Science and Business Media LLC

A combination of μSR and17O nuclear quadrupolar μLCR has been used to obtain detailed information on the muon site in YBa2Cu3O7. The rms magnitude of the nuclear dipolar fields in YBa2Cu3O7 enriched with 38%17O is about twice that in the natural16O sample. In addition the17O μLCR spectrum shows that the electric field gradient tensor at the oxygen closest to the muon is almost equal to that measured by NMR for the CuO2 plane sites O(2,3). These results suggest that the muon in fully oxygenated YBa2Cu3O7 is located at a single site 1.0 Å from an oxygen ion, probably O(2,3).

The magnetic properties of antiferromagnetic nanoparticles have been studied by Mössbauer spectroscopy and neutron scattering. Temperature series of Mössbauer spectra of non-interacting, superparamagnetic hematite nanoparticles were fitted by use of the Blume-Tjon relaxation model. It has been found that the magnetic anisotropy energy constant increases significantly with decreasing particle size. Neutron scattering experiments on similar samples give new information on both superparamagnetic relaxation and collective magnetic excitations. There is good agreement between the values of the parameters obtained from Mössbauer spectroscopy and neutron scattering. In samples of interacting hematite nanoparticles, the relaxation was significantly suppressed. The Mössbauer data for these samples are in accordance with a mean field model for an ordered state of strongly interacting particles. Mixing nanoparticles of hematite with CoO nanoparticles resulted in suppression of the superparamagnetic relaxation, whereas NiO nanoparticles had the opposite effect.