Emergence of Magnetic Anomaly and Development of Non-linear Susceptibility with Magnetic Field in ErVO₄

Novel phases in quantum materials arise when quantum fluctuations couple with frustration, geometries, and lattice dimensionalities. In continuation, frustrated magnetism combined with lattice degree of freedom, magnetoelastic coupling and magnetic anisotropy may result in exotic magnetic properties in a system. Here, we have studied a rare earth orthovanadate ErVO₄, where the presence of magnetoelastic coupling along easy c-axis of magnetization results in the evolution of different magnetic phases. The second nearest neighbour Er spins in this compound form a corner-sharing tetrahedra and the spins lie along the easy c-axis, in contradiction to other members of RVO₄ (R = Rare-earth) family. Our DC field superimposed AC susceptibility and heat capacity measurements show the emergence of a magnetic anomaly which is believed to originate due to the presence of large magnetoelastic coupling along the c-axis. Further, above 10 kOe, a magnetic phase associated with positive fifth order susceptibility is observed. In this region, the Zeeman energy linked with magnetic anisotropy stabilizes the interactions among the higher order moments. This observation is further supported by a theoretical model.