Orthogonal magnetic structures of FeO: representation analysis and DFT calculations.

The magnetic and electronic structures of FeO have been investigated at ambient and high pressures a combination of representation analysis, density functional theory (DFT+) calculations, and Mössbauer spectroscopy. A few spin configurations corresponding to the different irreducible representations have been considered. The total-energy calculations reveal that the magnetic ground state of FeO corresponds to an orthogonal spin order. Depending on the magnetic propagation vector , two spin-ordered phases with minimal energy differences are realized. The lowest energy magnetic phase is related to = (0, 0, 0) and is characterized by ferromagnetic ordering of iron magnetic moments at prismatic sites along the -axis and antiferromagnetic ordering of iron moments at octahedral sites along the -axis. For the = (1/2, 0, 0) phase, the moments in the prisms are antiferromagnetically ordered along the -axis and the moments in the octahedra are still antiferromagnetically ordered along the -axis. Under high pressure, FeO exhibits magnetic transitions with the corresponding electronic transitions of the metal-insulator type. At a critical pressure ∼ 60 GPa, the Fe ions at the octahedral sites undergo a high-spin to low-spin state crossover with a decrease in the unit-cell volume of ∼4%, while the Fe ions at the prismatic sites remain in the high-spin state up to 130 GPa. This site-dependent magnetic collapse is experimentally observed in the transformation of Mössbauer spectra measured at room temperature and high pressures.