PrVO3:: An inhomogeneous antiferromagnetic material with random fields -: art. no. 054414

We have studied the zero-field-cooled, field-cooled, magnetization and the hysteresis loops of a PrVO3 single crystal. The compound has shown some unusual features: (i) below the antiferromagnetic spin ordering (SO) temperature T-SO=132 K, we observed another transition with a glassy-like behavior; (ii) the hysteresis loops of the compound exhibit staircase-like behavior at a temperature below 3 K; (iii) although the high negative Weiss temperatures indicate that the compound is a (very) strong antiferromagnet, we observe relatively high values of the remanent magnetization (M-r) along all of the axes. Based on the results obtained, we argue that PrVO3 should be considered as a disorder (or inhomogeneous) antiferromagnet with random fields. We discuss the possible sources of disorder in the compound in terms of orbital quantum fluctuations.