The response of titanate pyrochlores (A2Ti2O7, A = Y, Gd and Sm) to electronic excitation is investigated utilizing an ab initio molecular dynamics method. All the titanate pyrochlores are found to undergo a crystalline-to-amorphous structural transition under a low concentration of electronic excitations. The transition temperature at which structural amorphization starts to occur depends on t...

We describe the ferromagnetism in the manganese pyrochlores, such as Tl2Mn2O7 and Sc2Mn2O7 , in terms of the interplay between superexchange, Zener double exchange, and indirect exchange, the first being antiferromagnetic ~AF! while the last two are ferromagnetic. The tendency towards the antiferroalignment of the localized Mn spins is significantly weakened due to ~i! the presence of spin frus...

The dispersion relations of magnons in ferromagnetic pyrochlores with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction are shown to possess Weyl points, i. e., pairs of topologically nontrivial crossings of two magnon branches with opposite topological charge. As a consequence of their topological nature, their projections onto a surface are connected by magnon arcs, thereby resembling closely Fermi arcs of e...

We demonstrate the appearance of thermal order by disorder in Ising pyrochlores with staggered antiferromagnetic order frustrated by an applied magnetic field. We use a mean-field cluster variational method, a low-temperature expansion, and Monte Carlo simulations to characterize the order-by-disorder transition. By direct evaluation of the density of states, we quantitatively show how a symmet...

Understanding and predicting radiation damage evolution in complex materials is crucial for developing next-generation nuclear energy sources. Here, using a combination of ion beam irradiation, transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, we show that, contrary to the behaviour observed in pyrochlores, the amorphization resistance of spinel compounds correlates directly with the ener...

Ab initio total energy calculations using the plane-wave pseudopotential method based on density functional theory were carried out to investigate the structural, energetic and electronic properties of A2Ti2O7 (A = La, Gd and Yb) pyrochlores. It turned out that the formation energies of antisite defects are not linearly dependent on the ratio of the cation radii, and, for the three compositions...

Iridate pyrochlores formed by hydrothermal synthesis provide robust OER catalysts for membrane electrode assemblies, giving effective oxygen evolution with minimal carbon corrosion.