Eur. Phys. J. Appl. Phys. 38, 41-46 (2007)
https://doi.org/10.1051/epjap:2007039

Symmetry of magnetic structures: the case of CeAl₂

¹ Département de Recherche Fondamentale sur la Matière Condensée D.S.M., Commissariat à l'Énergie Atomique, 17 avenue des Martyrs, 38054 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

Corresponding author: jacques.schweizer@cea.fr

Received: 4 October 2006
Accepted: 12 January 2007
Published online: 22 February 2007

Abstract

This article presents a group-theoretical investigation of an incommensurate magnetic structure in the case where the crystal structure is centrosymmetric while the structure vector k is not conserved by inversion. A first method starts with the conventional group-theoretical treatment taking into account the transformations which conserve k and then combines the solutions to obtain a centrosymmetric and real magnetization. A second method includes inversion in the group-theoretical treatment, for instance by introducing the complex conjugation operator and corepresentations. The general theory is applied to CeAl₂ with the scope of improving the knowledge of its magnetic structure.