Reexamination of the temperature dependences of resonant reflections in highly stoichiometric magnetite.

ABSTRACT

We have studied the temperature dependences of the so-called charge and orbital ordering reflections in the neighborhood of the Verwey transition by means of resonant x-ray scattering at the Fe K and L edges on a high purity single crystal of magnetite. Contrary to recently published results [J. E. Lorenzo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 226401 (2008)10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.226401], we show that all the reflections studied disappear simultaneously at the Verwey transition for both edges, on and off resonance. This means that there is no correlation between the Verwey (123.5 K) and the spin-reorientation (130 K) transitions and that the resonant reflections are driven by the lattice distortions.