Revisiting static and dynamic magnetic correlations in the chiralhelimagnet Cr_1/3NbS₂.

Transition metal dichalcogenides intercalated with magnetic ions can crystallize in a chiral, hexagonal space group.  Competition between Heisenberg exchange, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, magnetocrystalline anisotropy and an applied magnetic field in the monoaxial chiral magnet Cr_1/3NbS₂ lead to interesting long-period magnetic structures such as a helimagnetic and chiral soliton lattice states. We recently performed a small-angle neutron scattering experiment to characterize these states in detail. We observed higher-order peaks in our zero field data, which are unexpected for an ideal helical state with perfect sinusoidal modulation.  These signatures of anharmonic distortion could be due to undiscovered magnetocrystalline anisotropy, or metastable behavior due to disorder effects.