Van der Waals monolayers featuring magnetic states provide a fundamental building block for artificial quantum matter. Here, we establish the emergence of a multicomponent ground state featuring magneto-orbital excitations of the 3d2-transition metal trihalide VCl3 monolayer. We show that monolayer VCl3 realizes a ground state with simultaneous magnetic and orbital ordering using density functional theory. Using first-principles methods we derive an effective Hamiltonian with intertwined spin and orbital degree of freedom, which we demonstrate can be tuned by strain. We show that magneto-orbitons appear as the collective modes of this complex order, and arise from coupled orbiton magnon excitations due to the magneto-orbital coupling in the system. Our results establish VCl3 as a promising 2D material to observe emergent magneto-orbital excitations and provide a platform for multicomponent symmetry breaking.
@article{arxiv.2409.05056,
title = {Multicomponent magneto-orbital order and magneto-orbitons in monolayer VCl3},
author = {Luigi Camerano and Adolfo O. Fumega and Gianni Profeta and Jose L. Lado},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.05056},
year = {2025}
}