Magnetosynthesis effect on magnetic order, phonons, and magnons in single-crystal Sr₂IrO₄

It was shown earlier that applying a magnetic field during the growth of Sr2IrO4, also known as "field alteration," induces significant changes to its structural, magnetic, and transport properties. However, the microscopic nature of these changes is enigmatic. In this study, we employed resonant elastic and inelastic x-ray scattering, as well as Raman scattering, to investigate samples from two batches of Sr2IrO4 grown in magnetic fields of different strengths. Our findings reveal that samples grown in a weaker magnetic field have similar magnetic order to nonaltered samples, whereas those grown in a stronger field show a different stacking of weak in-plane ferromagnetic moments. Additionally, we observed significant softening and broadening of select Raman-active phonons in the field altered samples, with a stronger effect in the samples grown in the stronger field. We discuss insights that our results provide into the microscopic nature of field alteration in Sr2IrO4.