Anomalous variation of the Lamb-Mössbauer factor at the magnetic transition temperature in magnetoelectric GaFeO3.

Temperature-dependent (57)Fe Mössbauer spectroscopy (5-723 K) and neutron diffraction (2-290 K) measurements are carried out on polycrystalline magnetoelectric GaFeO(3). From the neutron diffraction data, evidence for the magnetostriction and increased disorder at Fe sites close to the ferrimagnetic Curie transition temperature (T(C)) is observed. From the Mössbauer data, it is observed that the Lamb-Mössbauer factor as a function of temperature f(T), which is related to the integral over the first Brillouin zone of the phonon spectrum, shows a unequivocal variation at the T(C). The observations are discussed in terms of spin-phonon coupling. The observed average hyperfine fields from (57)Fe Mössbauer spectra match with the bulk magnetization data. A critical exponent (β) of 0.38 ± 0.02 and a Debye temperature (θ(D)) of ~350 K is estimated from the (57)Fe Mössbauer data.