Scaling study and thermodynamic properties of the cubic helimagnet FeGe

Abstract

The critical behavior of the cubic helimagnet FeGe was obtained from isothermal magnetization data in very close vicinity of the ordering temperature. A thorough and consistent scaling analysis of these data revealed the critical exponents β=0.368,γ=1.382, and δ=4.787. The anomaly in the specific heat associated with the magnetic ordering can be well described by the critical exponent α=-0.133. The values of these exponents corroborate that the magnetic phase transition in FeGe belongs to the isotropic 3D-Heisenberg universality class. The specific heat data are well described by ab initio phonon calculations and confirm the localized character of the magnetic moments.