A Brillouin study of the temperature-dependence of the acoustic modes across the insulator–metal transitions in V2O3 and Cr-doped V2O3

Brillouin scattering studies have been carried out on high-quality single crystals of undoped and 0.9% Cr-doped V2O3. The observed modes in both the samples at ∼12 and ∼60 GHz are associated with the surface Rayleigh wave (SRW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW), respectively. In the undoped sample, the mode frequencies of the SRW and BAW modes decrease as the temperature is lowered from room temperature to the insulator–metal transition temperature (TIM=TN=∼130 K). Below the transition, the modes show hardening. In the doped sample, the SRW mode shows a similar temperature-dependence as the undoped one, but the BAW mode shows hardening from room temperature down to the lowest temperature (50 K). This is the first measurement of the sound velocity below TIM in the V2O3 system. The softening of the SRW frequency from 330 K to TIM can be qualitatively understood on the basis of the temperature-dependence of C44, which, in turn, is related to the orbital fluctuations in the paramagnetic metallic phase. The hardening of the mode frequencies below TIM suggests that C44 must increase in the antiferromagnetic insulating phase, possibly due to the orbital ordering.