Competing charge and spin instabilities and giant magnetoelastic coupling in CrSb.

Chromium antimonide (CrSb) shows short-range charge-order fluctuations at the M point with q* persisting well above T_N, then collapsing at the antiferromagnetic transition.

• Why it matters: Competing electronic orders are hard to disentangle across symmetry-breaking transitions, and identifying how charge and spin interact near T_N is key to new ordering mechanisms.
• What they did: The study tracks charge correlations and phonon behavior across T_N, observing a Kohn-like anomaly at q* and using first-principles calculations to test lattice stability with and without magnetic order.
• The result: At T_N the phonon dispersion reconstructs and exchange striction renormalizes the soft mode by ~6 milli-electron volts, implying giant spin-phonon coupling linked to magnetic symmetry breaking.

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