Field-tunable Toroidal Moment in a Chiral-lattice Magnet
April 8, 2022
Field-induced ferri- to ferrotoroidal transition in BaCoSiO4 showing magnetization data (circles) with the field H ǁ c and corresponding theoretical calculations (line). Insets: (top-left) illustration of the magnetic structures at zero field and (bottom-right) H = 2 T and corresponding toroidal moment t (+, - represent the toroidal moment up and down). Note the change in the orientation of the moments in the cyan colored sublattice.
Scientific Achievement
The field dependent magnetic structure of BaCoSiO4 has been solved, revealing a chiral lattice of tri-spin vortices exhibiting field induced metamagnetic transitions from ferri- to ferro-toroidal order.
Significance and Impact
This work opens new avenues for achieving tunable toroidal orders with switching using a single field.
Research Details
- Magnetization measurements revealed multi-stair metamagnetic transitions.
- Powder Neutron diffraction was used to confirm the magnetic structure at zero-field.
- Single crystal neutron diffraction was used to characterize the field dependent magnetic structures.
- Ab initio density functional theory calculations and theoretical modeling were used to understand the driving mechanisms.
“Field-tunable Toroidal Moment in a Chiral-lattice Magnet”
Lei Ding, Xianghan Xu, Harald Jeschke, Xiaojian Bai, Erxi Feng, Admasu Alemayehu, Jaewook Kim, Fei-ting Huang, Qiang Zhang, Xiaxin Ding, Neil Harrison, Vivien Zapf, Daniel Khomskii, Igor Mazin, Sang-Wook Cheong, and Huibo Cao
Nature Communications 12, 5339 (2021). DOI: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25657-6
