English

Colour symmetry and altermagnetic-like spin textures in noncollinear antiferromagnets

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2025-06-23 v3

Abstract

We present a formalism based on colour symmetry to analyse the momentum-space spin textures of non-collinear antiferromagnets. We show that, out of the spin textures allowed by the magnetic point group, \textcolor{\altcolor} {one can extract a component that is invariant by general rotations in spin space, and can exist in the absence of spin-orbit coupling, in complete analogy to spin textures in altermagnets}. We demonstrate this approach in the case of three complex, non-collinear magnets, Mn3_3Ir(Ge,Si), Pb2_2MnO4_4 and Mn3_3GaN. For Mn3_3GaN, we also show that the predictions of colour-symmetry analysis are consistent with density functional theory calculations performed on the same system both with and without spin-orbit coupling.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2501.02947,
  title  = {Colour symmetry and altermagnetic-like spin textures in noncollinear antiferromagnets},
  author = {Paolo G. Radaelli and Gautam Gurung},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.02947},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures. Accepted version including new supplementary informtion