Mechanical manipulation for ordered topological defects.

Randomly distributed topological defects created during the spontaneous symmetry breaking are the fingerprints to trace the evolution of symmetry, range of interaction, and order parameters in condensed matter systems. However, the effective mean to manipulate topological defects into ordered form is elusive due to the topological protection. Here, we establish a strategy to effectively align the topological domain networks in hexagonal manganites through a mechanical approach.

Magnetization reversal through an antiferromagnetic state.

Magnetization reversal in ferro- and ferrimagnets is a well-known archetype of non-equilibrium processes, where the volume fractions of the oppositely magnetized domains vary and perfectly compensate each other at the coercive magnetic field. Here, we report on a fundamentally new pathway for magnetization reversal that is mediated by an antiferromagnetic state. Consequently, an atomic-scale compensation of the magnetization is realized at the coercive field, instead of the mesoscopic or macroscopic domain cancellation in canonical reversal processes.

Hysteretic Responses of Skyrmion Lattices to Electric Fields in Magnetoelectric CuOSeO.

Electric field control of topologically nontrivial magnetic textures, such as skyrmions, provides a paradigm shift for future spintronics beyond the current silicon-based technology. While significant progress has been made by X-ray and neutron scattering studies, direct observation of such nanoscale spin structures and their dynamics driven by external electric fields remains a challenge in understanding the underlying mechanisms and harness functionalities. Here, using Lorentz transmission electron microscopy combined with electric and magnetic fields at liquid helium temperatures, we report the crystallographic orientation-dependent skyrmion responses to electric fields in thin slabs of magnetoelectric CuOSeO.

Strain-Control of Cycloidal Spin Order in a Metallic Van der Waals Magnet.

The manipulation of magnetism through strain control is a captivating area of research with potential applications for low-power devices that do not require dissipative currents. Recent investigations of insulating multiferroics have unveiled tunable relationships among polar lattice distortions, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI), and cycloidal spin orders that break inversion symmetry. These findings have raised the possibility of utilizing strain or strain gradient to manipulate intricate magnetic states by changing polarization.

Topologically protected magnetoelectric switching in a multiferroic.

Electric control of magnetism and magnetic control of ferroelectricity can improve the energy efficiency of magnetic memory and data-processing devices. However, the necessary magnetoelectric switching is hard to achieve, and requires more than just a coupling between the spin and the charge degrees of freedom. Here we show that an application and subsequent removal of a magnetic field reverses the electric polarization of the multiferroic GdMnO, thus requiring two cycles to bring the system back to the original configuration.

Topological spin/structure couplings in layered chiral magnet CrTaS: The discovery of spiral magnetic superstructure.

Chiral magnets have recently emerged as hosts for topological spin textures and related transport phenomena, which can find use in next-generation spintronic devices. The coupling between structural chirality and noncollinear magnetism is crucial for the stabilization of complex spin structures such as magnetic skyrmions. Most studies have been focused on the physical properties in homochiral states favored by crystal growth and the absence of long-ranged interactions between domains of opposite chirality.

New magnetic phase of the chiral skyrmion material CuOSeO.

The lack of inversion symmetry in the crystal lattice of magnetic materials gives rise to complex noncollinear spin orders through interactions of a relativistic nature, resulting in interesting physical phenomena, such as emergent electromagnetism. Studies of cubic chiral magnets revealed a universal magnetic phase diagram composed of helical spiral, conical spiral, and skyrmion crystal phases. We report a remarkable deviation from this universal behavior.

Magneto-absorption spectra of hydrogen-like yellow exciton series in cuprous oxide: excitons in strong magnetic fields.

We study the absorption spectra of the yellow excitons in CuO in high magnetic fields using polarization-resolved optical absorption measurements with a high frequency resolution. We show that the symmetry of the yellow exciton results in unusual selection rules for the optical absorption of polarized light and that the mixing of ortho- and para- excitons in magnetic field is important. The calculation of the energies of the yellow exciton series in strong and weak magnetic field limits suggests that a broad n = 2 line is comprized by two closely overlapping lines, gives a good fit to experimental data and allows to interpret the complex structure of excitonic levels.

Helimagnon Resonances in an Intrinsic Chiral Magnonic Crystal.

We experimentally study magnetic resonances in the helical and conical magnetic phases of the chiral magnetic insulator Cu_{2}OSeO_{3} at the temperature T=5  K. Using a broadband microwave spectroscopy technique based on vector network analysis, we identify three distinct sets of helimagnon resonances in the frequency range 2  GHz≤f≤20  GHz with low magnetic damping α≤0.003.

Incommensurate Spiral Order from Double-Exchange Interactions.

The double-exchange model describing interactions of itinerant electrons with localized spins is usually used to explain ferromagnetism in metals. We show that for a variety of crystal lattices of different dimensionalities and for a wide range of model parameters, the ferromagnetic state is unstable against a noncollinear spiral magnetic order. We revisit the phase diagram of the double-exchange model on a triangular lattice and show in a large part of the diagram the incommensurate spiral state has a lower energy than the previously discussed commensurate states.

Landau theory of topological defects in multiferroic hexagonal manganites.

Topological defects in ordered states with spontaneously broken symmetry often have unusual physical properties, such as fractional electric charge or a quantized magnetic field flux, originating from their non-trivial topology. Coupled topological defects in systems with several coexisting orders give rise to unconventional functionalities, such as the electric-field control of magnetization in multiferroics resulting from the coupling between the ferroelectric and ferromagnetic domain walls. Hexagonal manganites provide an extra degree of freedom: in these materials, both ferroelectricity and magnetism are coupled to an additional, non-ferroelectric structural order parameter.

Solitonic lattice and Yukawa forces in the rare-earth orthoferrite TbFeO3.

The random fluctuations of spins give rise to many interesting physical phenomena, such as the 'order-from-disorder' arising in frustrated magnets and unconventional Cooper pairing in magnetic superconductors. Here we show that the exchange of spin waves between extended topological defects, such as domain walls, can result in novel magnetic states. We report the discovery of an unusual incommensurate phase in the orthoferrite TbFeO(3) using neutron diffraction under an applied magnetic field.

Magnetic stripes and skyrmions with helicity reversals.

It was recently realized that topological spin textures do not merely have mathematical beauty but can also give rise to unique functionalities of magnetic materials. An example is the skyrmion--a nano-sized bundle of noncoplanar spins--that by virtue of its nontrivial topology acts as a flux of magnetic field on spin-polarized electrons. Lorentz transmission electron microscopy recently emerged as a powerful tool for direct visualization of skyrmions in noncentrosymmetric helimagnets.

Dynamics of Skyrmion crystals in metallic thin films.

We study the collective dynamics of the Skyrmion crystal in thin films of ferromagnetic metals resulting from the nontrivial Skyrmion topology. It is shown that the current-driven motion of the crystal reduces the topological Hall effect and the Skyrmion trajectories bend away from the direction of the electric current (the Skyrmion Hall effect). We find a new dissipation mechanism in noncollinear spin textures that can lead to a much faster spin relaxation than Gilbert damping, calculate the dispersion of phonons in the Skyrmion crystal, and discuss the effects of impurity pinning of Skyrmions.

Theory of electric polarization in multiorbital Mott insulators.

The interaction between the electric field E and spins in multiorbital Mott insulators is studied theoretically. We find a generic coupling mechanism, which works for all crystal lattices and which does not involve relativistic effects. It couples E to the "internal" electric field e originating from the dynamical Berry phase.

Temperature-dependent magnetoelectric effect from first principles.

We show that nonrelativistic exchange interactions and spin fluctuations can give rise to a linear magnetoelectric effect in collinear antiferromagnets at elevated temperatures that can exceed relativistic magnetoelectric responses by more than 1 order of magnitude. We show how symmetry arguments, ab initio methods, and Monte Carlo simulations can be combined to calculate temperature-dependent magnetoelectric susceptibilities entirely from first principles. The application of our method to Cr2O3 gives quantitative agreement with experiment.

Superexchange-driven magnetoelectricity in magnetic vortices.

We demonstrate that magnetic vortices in which spins are coupled to polar lattice distortions via superexchange exhibit an unusually large linear magnetoelectric response. We show that the periodic arrays of vortices formed by frustrated spins on kagome lattices provide a realization of this concept; our ab initio calculations for such a model structure yield a magnetoelectric coefficient that is 30 times larger than that of prototypical single phase magnetoelectrics. Finally, we identify the design rules required to obtain such a response in a practical material.

Multiferroics: a magnetic twist for ferroelectricity.

Magnetism and ferroelectricity are essential to many forms of current technology, and the quest for multiferroic materials, where these two phenomena are intimately coupled, is of great technological and fundamental importance. Ferroelectricity and magnetism tend to be mutually exclusive and interact weakly with each other when they coexist. The exciting new development is the discovery that even a weak magnetoelectric interaction can lead to spectacular cross-coupling effects when it induces electric polarization in a magnetically ordered state.

Ferroelectricity in spiral magnets.

It was recently observed that the ferroelectrics showing the strongest sensitivity to an applied magnetic field are spiral magnets. We present a phenomenological theory of inhomogeneous ferroelectric magnets, which describes their thermodynamics and magnetic field behavior, e.g.

Helicoidal ordering in iron perovskites.

We study the double exchange in transition metal oxides with itinerant and localized electrons. We show that the charge transfer energy Delta and the oxygen-oxygen hopping amplitude t(pp) have a strong effect on magnetic ordering: while for Delta>0 the ground state is ferromagnetic, for negative Delta and large t(pp) the double exchange gives rise to an incommensurate helicoidal ordering of local spins, observed, e.g.