Mechanical Activation and Cation Site Disorder in MgAlO.

The synthesis and crystallographic site occupancy were investigated for MgAlO with and without mechanical activation of the precursor powders. Heating to 1200 °C or higher resulted in the formation of a single spinel phase regardless of whether the powders were mechanically activated or not. Neutron diffraction analysis was used to determine cation site occupancy and revealed that mechanical activation resulted in a lower degree of cation site inversion compared to the nonactivated materials, which indicated that the powders were closer to thermodynamic equilibrium.

Spiral Spin Liquid on a Honeycomb Lattice.

Spiral spin liquids are correlated paramagnetic states with degenerate propagation vectors forming a continuous ring or surface in reciprocal space. On the honeycomb lattice, spiral spin liquids present a novel route to realize emergent fracton excitations, quantum spin liquids, and topological spin textures, yet experimental realizations remain elusive. Here, using neutron scattering, we show that a spiral spin liquid is realized in the van der Waals honeycomb magnet FeCl_{3}.

Quantifying fish otolith mineralogy for trace-element chemistry studies.

Otoliths are frequently used to infer environmental conditions or fish life history events based on trace-element concentrations. However, otoliths can be comprised of any one or combination of the three most common polymorphs of calcium carbonate-aragonite, calcite, and vaterite-which can affect the ecological interpretation of otolith trace-element results. Previous studies have reported heterogeneous calcium carbonate compositions between left and right otoliths but did not provide quantitative assessments of polymorph abundances.