Hyperfine local probe study of alkaline-earth manganites SrMnO₃ and BaMnO₃.

We report perturbed angular correlation measurements with (111m)Cd/(111)Cd and (111)In/(111)Cd probes, at the ISOLDE-CERN facility, in the manganite compounds BaMnO3, with the 6H and 15R polymorphs, and SrMnO3, with the 4H polymorph. The electric field gradient (EFG) is measured, and found approximately constant in a large temperature range for all the compounds. The EFG is also calculated from first principles with density functional theory, and compared with experimental results by considering diluted substitutional Cd impurities. Based on the results, we assign as sites for the probes the Ba (for BaMnO3-6H, 15R) and Sr (for SrMnO3-4H) sites, apart from fractions of undetermined origin in the case of BaMnO3-6H. We predict the hyperfine parameters in the recently synthesized multiferroic manganite Sr(0.5)Ba(0.5)MnO3, and its variation with the structure and electric polarization, which is found to be very small.