Finite-Temperature Toroidal Moment Amenable to Direct Observation in an Fe$_{10}$Dy$_{10}$ Molecular Ring
Abstract
Single-molecule toroics (SMTs) host closed magnetic-vortex configurations that carry toroidal moments , whose electric-dipole symmetry enables magnetoelectric spin control. Yet, opposite toroidal chiralities are degenerate in conventional magnetic fields, making direct detection of molecular toroidal polarisation challenging. Current approaches probe molecular toroidal dynamics only indirectly through weak residual magnetism, leaving direct interrogation of toroidal polarisation an open challenge. Moreover, the survival of toroidal polarization at finite temperature, and realistic preparation-and-readout conditions, have not been quantitatively established. Here we investigate the icosanuclear -- molecular ring FeDy, featuring a 62-billion-dimensional low-energy manifold with pervasive toroidal character, rendered computationally tractable via an ab initio-informed transfer-matrix framework with perturbative corrections. Our model reproduces magnetic and calorimetric measurements and reveals a maximally toroidal ground doublet with robust finite-temperature toroidal response. We introduce the toroidal susceptibility as a finite-temperature linear-response function to quantify toroidal polarisation induced by magnetic-field curl. We then develop a preparation-and-detection protocol in which a temporally asymmetric near-infrared waveform generates a cumulative toroidal population imbalance, while an ab initio-informed magnetoelectric tensor predicts an electric-field-induced magnetic moment within SQUID detectability. These results establish FeDy as a molecular platform where toroidal polarisation can be prepared, accumulated and read out under realistic experimental conditions.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.05424,
title = {Finite-Temperature Toroidal Moment Amenable to Direct Observation in an Fe$_{10}$Dy$_{10}$ Molecular Ring},
author = {Alessandro Soncini and Kieran Hymas and Jonas Braun and Yannik F. Schneider and Simone Calvello and Amer Baniodeh and Yanhua Lan and Wolfgang Wernsdorfer and Marco Affronte and Christopher E. Anson and Annie K. Powell},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.05424},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Main manuscript: 37 pages, 6 figures. Supplementary notes: 50 pages, 7 figures