English

Coupled Spin-Phonon Excitations in Helical Multiferroics

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-10-28 v1

Abstract

Both the Dzyaloshiskii-Moriya interaction and the exchange-striction are shown to affect dynamically the magnetoelectric excitations in the perovskite multiferroic RMnO3. The exchange-striction results in a biquadratic interaction between the spins and the transverse phonons, giving rise to quantum fluctuations of the ferroelectric polarization P. This leads to low-lying phonon modes that are perpendicular to P and to the helical spins at small wave vector but are parallel to P at a wave vector close to the magnetic modulation vector. For spin-1/2 helimagnet, the local polarization can be completely reversed by the spin fluctuation, and so does the direction of the on-site spin chirality, which allows for a finite differential scattering intensity of polarized neutrons from a cycloidal magnet.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1007.2273,
  title  = {Coupled Spin-Phonon Excitations in Helical Multiferroics},
  author = {Chenglong Jia and Jamal Berakdar},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.2273},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

7 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T15:47:53.666Z