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Non-collinear ground state from a four-spin chiral exchange in a tetrahedral magnet

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2021-09-22 v1 Materials Science Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We propose a quartic chiral term mxmymzmm_x m_y m_z \nabla \cdot \mathbf{m} for the energy density of a cubic ferromagnet with broken parity symmetry (point group TdT_d). We demonstrate that this interaction causes a phase transition from a collinear ferromagnetic state to a non-collinear magnetic cone ground state provided its strength exceeds the geometric mean of magnetic exchange and cubic anisotropy. The corresponding non-collinear ground state may also be additionally stabilized by an external magnetic field pointing along certain crystallographic directions. The four-spin chiral exchange does also manifest itself in peculiar magnon spectra and favors spin waves with the wave vector that is perpendicular to the average magnetization direction.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2012.07666,
  title  = {Non-collinear ground state from a four-spin chiral exchange in a tetrahedral magnet},
  author = {I. A. Ado and O. Tchernyshyov and M. Titov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.07666},
  year   = {2021}
}

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8 pages