English

Why is the $d$-Wave spin splitting in CuF$_2$ bulk-like?

Materials Science 2026-02-17 v1 Other Condensed Matter

Abstract

With the advent of nonrelativistic spin splitting in collinear compensated antiferromagnets, several candidate materials have also been proposed, among which the family of transition-metal difluorides stands out as a prominent example. Within this family, most members exhibit planar dd-wave spin splitting, whereas CuF2_2 shows bulk dd-wave splitting with an explicit kzk_z dependence. In this work, we show that this transition from planar to bulk dd-wave splitting in CuF2_2 is primarily driven by the antipolar displacements of the F ions, which are absent in the tetragonal rutile structure of the other family members. Our calculations reveal that these additional structural distortions introduce an extra plane of anisotropic magnetization density, giving rise to an additional totally symmetric component of the magnetic octupole tensor. The kk-space representation of this octupole component, consequently, dictates an additional direction of spin splitting, thereby transforming the dd-wave spin splitting pattern from planar to bulk-like. We further analyze the effect of spin-orbit coupling on the magnetic octupoles and the resulting spin splitting in the band structure. Our work highlights the possibility of controlling the pattern of nonrelativistic spin splitting through structural modifications, for example, via the application of external pressure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.14608,
  title  = {Why is the $d$-Wave spin splitting in CuF$_2$ bulk-like?},
  author = {Muskan and Subhadeep Bandyopadhyay and Sayantika Bhowal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.14608},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages and 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:38:15.415Z