English

Altermagnetic spin textures: Emergent electrodynamics, quantum geometry, and probes

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2026-02-25 v1 Materials Science

Abstract

Emergent electrodynamics arising from spatially and temporally varying magnetic textures provides a framework for spin control in quantum materials. While this principle is established for ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic textures, its consequences for altermagnets -- magnetic orders with vanishing net magnetization but finite spin splitting -- remain largely unexplored. In this work, we develop an effective low-energy theory of itinerant electrons coupled to smoothly varying altermagnetic spin textures. In the adiabatic regime, we show that altermagnetic textures generate additional emergent electromagnetic fields and quantum-geometric effects that are absent in conventional magnetic systems. These effects include emergent Zeeman fields that encode the structure of the altermagnetic order parameter, enabling local spin manipulation and a way to distinguish different altermagnetic orders. Moreover, we demonstrate a quantum-metric-induced, spin-dependent electron lensing effect that provides a mechanism for spin filtering, and discuss the local admixture of effective odd-parity magnetic components. Our results suggest that textured altermagnets could serve as a versatile resource for spintronics functionalities and a probe of altermagnetism.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.20236,
  title  = {Altermagnetic spin textures: Emergent electrodynamics, quantum geometry, and probes},
  author = {Constantin Schrade and Mathias S. Scheurer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20236},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:48:34.651Z