Magnetodielectric effect and optic soft mode behaviour in quantum paraelectric EuTiO3 ceramics

Infrared reflectivity and time-domain terahertz transmission spectra of EuTiO3 ceramics revealed a polar optic phonon at 6-300K whose softening is fully responsible for the recently observed quantum paraelectric behaviour. Even if our EuTiO3 ceramics show lower permittivity than the single crystal due to a reduced density and/ or small amount of secondary pyrochlore Eu2Ti2O7 phase, we confirmed a magnetic field dependence of the permittivity, also slightly smaller than in single crystal. An attempt to reveal the soft phonon dependence at 1.8K on the magnetic field up to 13T remained below the accuracy of our infrared reflectivity experiment. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2007.