At high temperature, approximately independent paramagnetic ions give the appropriate Curie constant. The negative Weiss temperatures and the reduction of on cooling initially indicate predominantly antiferromagnetic correlations. The sharp rise near the ordering temperature nevertheless reveals a strongly enhanced low-field magnetic response.
A net moment could arise from a canted antiferromagnet, a ferrimagnet, or a ferromagnet with competing antiferromagnetic interactions. Differences between field-cooled magnetization and zero-field-cooled magnetization suggest history-dependent domain selection or slow relaxation, but are not alone proof of a particular microscopic spin arrangement. An ordinary compensated antiferromagnet would not account for a large ordering-related ferromagnetic-like low-field contribution without an additional mechanism.
The canted pattern has opposite components but a common component. Write neighboring spins as and . Their scalar product is , and the cross-product magnitude is .
There are three exchange bonds per spin, two eligible bonds per spin for the term, and one single-ion term per spin. HenceFor the branch close to the collinear state,Minimization is equivalent to maximizing , which givesThe chosen branch is a minimum of the energy because it maximizes that positive-amplitude sinusoid. The resulting state is a canted antiferromagnet with a small common moment. The source's absolute-value interaction selects a canting magnitude but is symmetric between the two signs of the weak moment; it is not an oriented vector Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction specifying a unique handedness.