The relative influences of disorder and of frustration on the glassy dynamics in magnetic systems

The magnetization relaxations of three different types of geometrically frustrated magnetic systems have been studied with the same experimental procedures as previously used in spin glasses. The materials investigated are Y2Mo2O7 (pyrochlore system), SrCr8.6Ga3.4O19 (piled pairs of Kagome layers) and (H3O)Fe3(SO4)2(OH)6 (jarosite compound). Despite a very small amount of disorder, all the samples exhibit many characteristic features of spin glass dynamics below a freezing temperature Tg, much smaller than their Curie–Weiss temperature θ. The ageing properties of their thermoremanent magnetization can be well accounted for by the same scaling law as in spin glasses, and the values of the scaling exponents are very close. The effects of temperature variations during ageing have been specifically investigated. In the pyrochlore and the bi-Kagome compounds, a decrease of temperature after some waiting period at a certain temperature Tp reinitializes ageing, and the evolution at the new temperature is the same as if the system were just quenched from above Tg. However, as the temperature is raised back to Tp, the sample recovers the state it had previously reached at that temperature. These features are known in spin glasses as rejuvenation and memory effects. They are clear signatures of the spin glass dynamics. In the Kagome compound, there is also some rejuvenation and memory, but much larger temperature changes are needed to observe the effects. In that sense, the behaviour of this compound is quantitatively different from that of spin glasses.