Spin reorientation and in-plane magnetoresistance of lightly doped La2-xSrxCuO4 in magnetic fields up to 55 T -: art. no. 184527

The magnetoresistance (MR) in the in-plane resistivity is measured in magnetic fields up to 55 T in lightly doped La2-xSrxCuO4 in the Neel state (x=0.01) and in the spin-glass state (x=0.03) using high-quality untwinned single crystals. In both cases, a large negative MR is observed to appear when the magnetic order is established. For x=0.01, it is found that the MR is indicative of a one-step transition into a high-field weak-ferromagnetic state at around 20 T when the magnetic field is applied from the spin easy axis (b axis), which means that there is no spin-flop transition in the Neel state of this material; this is contrary to a previous report, but is natural in light of the peculiar in-plane magnetic susceptibility anisotropy recently found in this system. In the spin-glass state, we observe that the large (up to similar to20%) negative MR saturates at around 40 T, and this MR is found to be essentially isotropic when the magnetic field is rotated within the ab plane. Our data show that the large negative MR is inherent to LSCO in a magnetically ordered state, in which the weak-ferromagnetic (WF) moment becomes well-defined; we discuss that the observed MR is essentially due to the reorientation of the WF moments towards the magnetic field direction both in the Neel state and in the spin-glass state.