Comment on "Spin crossover in (Mg,Fe)O: A Mossbauer effect study with an alternative interpretation of x-ray emission spectroscopy data"

Abstract

In a recent paper, Kantor presented Mossbauer spectroscopy data on the pressure dependence of the Fe spin state in Mg1-xFexO [Phys. Rev. B 73, 100101(R) (2006)] and found that the transition was completed at significantly higher pressures than what had been found by x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) studies. In order to account for the discrepancy, the authors reanalyzed the XES spectra using a simple spectral decomposition and achieved good agreement for the two types of data. In this paper, we show that the proposed alternative analysis of the XES spectra is inadequate, prove that previous XES work had correctly identified the low-spin state at the highest pressures, and provide a complete reanalysis of the XES data.