Co3Sn2S2, a ferromagnetic Weyl semi-metal with Co atoms on a kagome lattice, has generated much recent attention. Experiments have identified a temperature scale below the Curie temperature. Here, we find that this magnet keeps a memory, when not exposed to a magnetic field sufficiently large to erase it. We identify the driver of this memory effect as a small secondary population of spins, whose coercive field is significantly larger than that of the majority spins. The shape of the magnetization hysteresis curve has a threshold magnetic field set by the demagnetizing factor. These two field scales set the hitherto unidentified temperature scale, which is not a thermodynamic phase transition, but a crossing point between meta-stable boundaries. Global magnetization is well defined, even when it is non-uniform, but drastic variations in local magnetization point to a coarse energy landscape, with the thermodynamic limit not achieved at micrometer length scales.
@article{arxiv.2407.11836,
title = {Magnetic memory and distinct spin populations in ferromagnetic Co3Sn2S2},
author = {Charles Menil and Brigitte Leridon and Antonella Cavanna and Ulf Gennser and Dominique Mailly and Linchao Ding and Xiaokang Li and Zengwei Zhu and Benoît Fauqué and Kamran Behnia},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.11836},
year = {2025}
}