Influence of the concentration of Ca impurity on the magnetic threshold of the magnetoplastic effect in NaCl crystals

Abstract

It is found experimentally that the threshold magnetic field B _c for the magnetoplastic effect, i.e., the field at which the depinning of dislocations from paramagnetic impurities in an external magnetic field begins to be observed, increases with increasing concentration C of Ca impurity in NaCl crystals in the range C=(0.5–100) ppm. It is shown that the dependence B _c(C) exhibits a distinct tendency toward saturation. The physical interpretation of the observed dependence rests on the notion that as the impurity concentration C increases, the average size of the impurity complexes increases and, accordingly, the local atomic configuration around the impurity atoms changes according to a definite pattern. In particular, the average number $\bar n_v$ of cation vacancies among the nearest neighbors increases from 1 to 6 as the number N of Ca atoms in the complex increases, and this trend, in turn, should cause the thermal vibration amplitude of the Ca atoms to increase. In other words, the phenomenon in question appears to be physically analogous in its microscopic mechanisms to the previously observed increase of B _c with increasing temperature. The proposed interpretation is further supported by good correlation of the experimental dependence B _c(C) with the calculated function $\bar n_c (N)$.