Common effect of chemical and external pressures on the magnetic properties of RCoPO (R = La, Pr, Nd, Sm). II.

We investigate the direct correspondence between Co band ferromagnetism and structural parameters in the pnictide oxides RCoPO for different rare-earth ions (R=La,Pr,Nd,Sm) by means of muon-spin spectroscopy and ab initio calculations, complementing our results published previously [G. Prando et al., Common effect of chemical and external pressures on the magnetic properties of RCoPO (R=La,Pr), Phys. Rev. B 87, 064401 (2013)]. We find that both the transition temperature to the ferromagnetic phase TC and the volume of the crystallographic unit cell V are conveniently tuned by the R ionic radius and/or external pressure. We report a linear correlation between TC and V and our ab initio calculations unambiguously demonstrate a full equivalence of chemical and external pressures. As such, we show that R ions influence the ferromagnetic phase only via the induced structural shrinkage without involving any active role from the electronic f degrees of freedom, which are only giving a sizable magnetic contribution at much lower temperatures.