Field-induced metastability of the modulation wave vector in a magnetic soliton lattice

We present magnetic-field-induced metastability of the magnetic soliton lattice in a bilayer ruthenate Ca-3(Ru1-xFex)(2)O-7(x = 0.05) through single-crystal neutron diffraction study. We show that the incommensurability of the modulation wave vector at zero field strongly depends on the history of magnetic field at low temperature, and that the equilibrium ground state can be achieved by warming above a characteristic temperature Tg similar to 37 K. We suggest that such metastability might be associated with the domain wall pinning by the magnetic Fe dopants.