Investigation of the Spin-Peierls transition in CuGeO3 by Raman scattering

Abstract Raman experiments on the Spin-Peierls compound CuGeO3 and the substituted (Cu2−x,Znx)GeO3 and Cu(Ge1−x,GaxO3 compounds were performed in order to investigate the response of specific magnetic excitations of the one-dimensional spin-chain to spin anisotropies and substitution-induced disorder. In pure CuGeO3, in addition to normal phonon scattering which is not affected at all by the spin-peierls transition, four types of magnetic scattering features were observed. Below TSP = 14 K a singlet-triplet excitation at 30 cm−1, two-magnon scattering from 30 to 227 cm−1 and folded phonon modes at 369 and 819 cm−1 were identified. They were assigned by their temperature dependence and lineshape. For temperatures between the spin-peierls transition TSP and approsimately 100 K a broad intensity maximum centered at 300 cm−1 is observed. The temperature dependence of this intensity is similar to the behavior of lattice fluctuations recently observed in an electron diffraction study. This scattering is attributed to dynamical spin-peierls fluctuations of the weakly or non-static dimerized spin chain.