Spin and Orbital Magnetic Response on the Surface of a Topological Insulator
Abstract
Coupling of the spin and orbital degrees of freedom on the surface of a strong three-dimensional insulator, on the one hand, and textured magnetic configuration in an adjacent ferromagnetic film, on the other, is studied using a combination of transport and thermodynamic considerations. Expressing exchange coupling between the localized magnetic moments and Dirac electrons in terms of the electrons' out-of-plane orbital and spin magnetizations, we relate the thermodynamic properties of a general ferromagnetic spin texture to the physics in the zeroth Landau level. Persistent currents carried by Dirac electrons endow the magnetic texture with a Dzyaloshinski-Moriya interaction, which exhibits a universal scaling form as a function of electron temperature, chemical potential, and the time-reversal symmetry breaking gap. In addition, the orbital motion of electrons establishes a direct magnetoelectric coupling between the unscreened electric field and local magnetic order, which furnishes complex long-ranged interactions within the magnetic film.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1411.2070,
title = {Spin and Orbital Magnetic Response on the Surface of a Topological Insulator},
author = {Yaroslav Tserkovnyak and D. A. Pesin and Daniel Loss},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1411.2070},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
5 pages, 2 figures