Decrease of the homogeneous width of the Tm3+ electron energy levels in TmBa2CCu3 O6+x at the superconducting transition

Abstract

Enhanced NMR of 169Tm (I= 1 2) enhanced NMR has been studied in TmBa2Cu3O6+x, x=0, 0.2, 0.4, at temperatures 1.2-40K. The nuclear magnetic relaxation rates at T>20K increase exponentially as 1 T1(2) = R1(2)exp(-Δ/kT), with Δ = 176 K being the energy of the first excited state of the Tm3+ ion, while the R1(2) pre-exponential factors are inversely proportional to the homogenous width Γo of this doublet state. The pre-exponential factors measured at the frequencies of 48 and 69 MHz show homogeneous broadening of the 4f-levels due to the decreasing dipole-dipole transfer of the electron excitations from ion to ion at increasing because of crystal structure disordering. A sharp decrease of Γo (by about 0.9K) is observed in the superconducting compound with x=0.4 (Tc onset at 20K) at low temperatures and is attributed to the weakening of the 4f-electron-phonon interaction. At the temperatures around 6K the same sample displays enhancement of the transverse relaxation due to the relatively slow (W ≈ 109s-1) fluctuations of the internal magnetic fields caused by Cu2+ ions in CuO2 planes. © 1992.