On the correlation between supercooling, superheating and kinetic arrest in a magnetic glass Pr0.5Ca0.5Mn0.975Al0.025O3

Abstract

We report a quantitative investigation of the magnetic field-temperature phase diagram by taking into account a simple phenomenological model arising out of the interplay of kinetic arrest and thermodynamic transitions in a magnetic glass Pr0.5Ca0.5Mn0.975Al0.025O3, through magnetization measurements. Such studies are necessary as kinetic arrest plays an important role in the formation of “magnetic glasses”, which has been observed in systems undergoing first order magnetic phase transitions. It has been shown that disorder in a system results in the formation kinetic arrest (HK,TK) band, like supercooling (H*,T*) and superheating (H**,T**) band. Quantitative proofs are given to show that (HK,TK) band is anticorrelated with (H*,T*) and (H**,T**) bands, while the later two are correlated among themselves. Analysis of time dependence of magnetization at different temperatures is carried out to establish the fact that the kinetic arrested state is different from the supercooled state.