Exchange interaction tends to favor collinear or coplanar magnetic orders in rotationally invariant spin systems. Indeed, such magnetic structures are usually selected by thermal or quantum fluctuations in highly frustrated magnets. Here we show that a complex noncoplanar magnetic order with a quadrupled unit cell is stabilized by itinerant electrons on the pyrochlore lattice. Specifically we consider the Kondo-lattice and Hubbard models at quarter filling. The electron Fermi 'surface' at this filling factor is topologically equivalent to three intersecting Fermi circles. Perfect nesting of the Fermi lines leads to magnetic ordering with multiple wavevectors and a definite handedness. The chiral order might persist without magnetic order in a chiral spin liquid at finite temperatures.
We study double-exchange models with itinerant t2g electrons in spinel and pyrochlore crystals. In both cases the localized spins form a network of corner-sharing tetrahedra. We show that the strong directional dependence of t2g orbitals leads to unusual Fermi surfaces that induce spin superstructures and noncoplanar orderings for a weak coupling between itinerant electrons and localized spins. Implications of our results to ZnV2O4 and Cd2Os2O7 are also discussed.
Noncollinear and noncoplanar magnetic textures including skyrmions and vortices act as emergent electromagnetic fields and give rise to novel electronic and transport properties. We here report a unified understanding of noncoplanar magnetic orderings emergent from the spin-charge coupling in itinerant magnets. The mechanism has its roots in effective multiple spin interactions beyond the conventional Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) mechanism, which are ubiquitously generated in itinerant electron systems with local magnetic moments. Carefully examining the higher-order perturbations in t…
We study noncoplanar magnetic ordering in frustrated itinerant magnets. For a family of Kondo square lattice models with classical local moments, we find that a double-$Q$ noncoplanar vortex crystal has lower energy than the single-$Q$ helical order expected from the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction whenever the lattice symmetry dictates four global maxima in the bare magnetic susceptibility. By expanding in the small Kondo exchange and the degree of noncoplanarity, we demonstrate that this noncoplanar state arises from a Fermi surface instability, and it is generic for a wide range o…
Effective actions, such as nonlinear sigma models, are important tools in studying low-energy fluctuations of magnetically ordered states. Here we derive an effective action for the smooth order-parameter distortions of noncoplanar magnetic textures [with an SO(3) order parameter, as opposed to the SO(3)/SO(2)=S^2 of collinear magnets] coupled to itinerant electrons. Noncoplanar magnetic textures commonly arise in the presence of electron-mediated long-range spin exchange interactions, giving rise to the emergence of rich electronic phenomena such as anomalous quantum Hall effect. We parameter…
Gradual Localization of Itinerant Cobalt 3d Electrons in the Pyrochlore Ferromagnetic Metal LuInCo4
Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo(东京大学固体物理研究所);Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kyoto University(京都大学材料科学与工程系);Institute for Integrated Radiation and Nuclear Science, Kyoto University(京都大学辐射核科学综合研究所);Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials, Tohoku University(东北大学先进材料跨学科研究所);Department of Molecular Chemistry and Biochemistry, Doshisha University(立命馆大学分子化学与生物化学系)
A formation of tetrahedral spin clusters is discovered by Monte Carlo simulation for a spin-ice type double-exchange model on a pyrochlore lattice. The spin-cluster phase is magnetically disordered, but breaks spatial inversion symmetry spontaneously by developing noncoplanar four-spin molecules periodically on the pyrochlore lattice. We find that the system exhibits a nonzero spin Hall conductivity in the spin-cluster phase. The result suggests that an intersite-multipole order induces the unconventional spin Hall state without the spin-orbit interaction.
We theoretically investigate multiple-$Q$ spin textures, which are composed of superpositions of spin density waves with different wave numbers, for an effective spin model of centrosymmetric itinerant magnets. Our focus is on the interplay between biquadratic interactions arising from the spin-charge coupling and magnetic anisotropy caused by the spin-orbit coupling. Taking into account two types of the magnetic anisotropy, single-ion anisotropy and bond-dependent anisotropy, we elucidate magnetic phase diagrams for an archetypal triangular-lattice system in the absence and presence of an ext…
In the highly frustrated pyrochlore magnet spins form a lattice of corner sharing tetrahedra. We show that the tetrahedral ``molecule'' at the heart of this structure undergoes a Jahn-Teller distortion when lattice motion is coupled to the antiferromagnetism. We extend this analysis to the full pyrochlore lattice by means of Landau theory and argue that it should exhibit spin-Peierls phases with bond order but no spin order. We find a range of Neel phases, with collinear, coplanar and noncoplanar order. While collinear Neel phases are easiest to generate microscopically, we also exhibit an int…
We report on a ternary intermetallic compound, "YMn2Zn20", comprising a pyrochlore lattice made of Mn atoms. A series of In-doped single crystals undergo no magnetic long-range order down to 0.4 K, in spite of the fact that the Mn atom carries a local magnetic moment at high temperatures, showing Curie-Weiss magnetism. However, In-rich crystals exhibit spin-glass transitions at approximately 10 K due to a disorder arising from the substitution, while, with decreasing In content, the spin-glass transition temperature is reduced to 1 K. Then, heat capacity divided by temperature approaches a lar…
We present an extensive numerical study of a new type of frustrated itinerant magnetism on the pyrochlore lattice. In this theory, the pyrochlore magnet can be viewed as a cross-linking network of Kondo or double-exchange chains. Contrary to models based on Mott insulators, this itinerant magnetism approach provides a natural explanation for several spin and orbital superstructures observed on the pyrochlore lattice. Through extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we obtain the phase diagrams at two representative electron filling fractions $n = 1/2$ and 2/3. In particular, we show that an intrigui…
Motivated by experiments on Pr2Ir2O7, we consider metallic pyrochlore systems A2B2O7, where the A-sites are occupied by rare-earth local moments and the B-sites host 5d transition metal ions with itinerant strongly spin-orbit coupled electrons. Assuming non-Kramers doublets on the A-site, we derive the RKKY interaction between them mediated by the B-site itinerant electrons and find extended non-Heisenberg interactions. Analyzing a simplified model of the RKKY interaction, we uncover a local moment phase with coexisting spiral Ising-like magnetic dipolar and XY-like quadrupolar ordering. This …
We report measurements performed on a polycrystalline sample of the pyrochlore compound Nd2Sn2O7. It undergoes a second order magnetic phase transition at Tc ~ 0.91 K to a noncoplanar all-in-all-out magnetic structure of the Nd3+ magnetic moments. The thermal behavior of the low temperature specific heat fingerprints excitations with linear dispersion in a three-dimensional lattice. The temperature independent spin-lattice relaxation rate measured below Tc and the anomalously slow paramagnetic spin dynamics detected up to ~ 30 Tc are suggested to be due to magnetic short-range correlations in …
We study a spin-ice Kondo lattice model on a breathing pyrochlore lattice with classical localized spins. The highly efficient kernel polynomial expansion method, together with a classical Monte Carlo method, is employed in order to study the magnetic phase diagram at four representative values of the number density of itinerant electrons. We tune the breathing mode by varying the hopping ratio -- the ratio of hopping parameters for itinerant electrons along inequivalent paths. Several interesting magnetic phases are stabilized in the phase diagram parameterized by the hopping ratio, Kondo cou…
We present the benchmark of the polynomial expansion Monte Carlo method to a Kondo lattice model with classical localized spins on a geometrically frustrated lattice. The method enables to reduce the calculation amount by using the Chebyshev polynomial expansion of the density of states compared to a conventional Monte Carlo technique based on the exact diagonalization of the fermion Hamiltonian matrix. Further reduction is brought by a real-space truncation of the vector-matrix operations. We apply the method to the model with spin-ice type Ising spins on a three-dimensional pyrochlore lattic…
We consider a class of d- and f-electron systems in which dipolar-octupolar Kramers doublets arise on the sites of the pyrochlore lattice. For such doublets, two components of the pseudospin transform like a magnetic dipole, while the other transforms like a component of the magnetic octupole tensor. Based on a symmetry analysis, we construct and study models of dipolar-octupolar doublets in itinerant and localized limits. In both limits, the resulting models are of surprisingly simple form. In the itinerant limit, we find topological insulating behavior. In the localized limit, the most gener…
Interplay between itinerant electrons and localized spins in itinerant magnets gives rise to a variety of noncoplanar multiple-$Q$ spin textures, such as the skyrmion, hedgehog, meron, and vortex. We elucidate that another type of multiple-$Q$ state consisting of collinear sinusoidal waves, a magnetic bubble crystal, appears at finite temperatures in a centrosymmetric itinerant electron system. The results are obtained for the classical Kondo lattice model with easy-axis single-ion anisotropy on a triangular lattice by a large-scale numerical simulation. We find that a finite-temperature topol…
We investigate the interplay between geometrical frustration and strong electron correlation based upon the pyrochlore Hubbard model. In the half-filling case, using the perturbative expansion in terms of electron correlation, we show that the self-energy shows a divergent behavior leading the system into the Mott insulating state, in which quantum disordered spin liquid without magnetic long-range order realizes. In the hole-doped case, we obtain heavy-fermion-like Fermi liquid state. We also calculate the neutron cross section which is well consistent with recent neutron scattering experimen…
Magnetic skyrmions are swirling spin textures with topologically protected noncoplanarity. Recently, skyrmions with the topological number of unity have been extensively studied in both experiment and theory. We here show that a skyrmion crystal with an unusually high topological number of two is stabilized in itinerant magnets at zero magnetic field. The results are obtained for a minimal Kondo lattice model on a triangular lattice by an unrestricted large-scale numerical simulation and variational calculations. We find that the topological number can be switched by a magnetic field as $2\lef…
We investigate analytically and numerically the classical ground states of frustrated Heisenberg models on pyrochlore and kagome lattices in zero and finite magnetic fields. Each model has a wide region in the microscopic parameter space, where the propagation vector is turned to a commensurate position equal to a half of the reciprocal lattice vector with a nontrivial star. Within these regions the zero-field ground states for both models correspond to noncoplanar triple-k spin configurations. A universal appearance of the 3-k states can be related to the spin-space dimensionality. A strong m…
In the metallic pyrochlore Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$, the conducting Molybdenum sublattice adopts canted, yet nearly collinear ferromagnetic order with nonzero scalar spin chirality. The chemical potential may be controlled by replacing Nd$^{3+}$ with Ca$^{2+}$, while introducing only minimal additional disorder to the conducting states. Here, we demonstrate the stability of the canted ferromagnetic state, including the tilting angle of Molybdenum spins, in (Nd$_{1-x}$Ca$_{x}$)$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$ (NCMO) with $x\le 0.15$ using magnetic susceptibility measurements. Mo-Mo and Mo-Nd magnetic couplings both ch…
The insulating pyrochlore compound Nd2Sn2O7 has been shown to undergo a second order magnetic phase transition at Tc ~ 0.91 K to a noncoplanar all-in--all-out magnetic structure of the Nd3+ magnetic moments. An anomalously slow paramagnetic spin dynamics has been evidenced from neutron backscattering and muon spin relaxation (muSR). In the case of muSR this has been revealed through the strong effect of a 50 mT longitudinal field on the spin-lattice relaxation rate. Here, motivated by a recent successful work performed for Yb2Ti2O7 and Yb2Sn2O7, analyzing the shape of the muSR longitudinal pol…
We theoretically investigate the origin of the square-type skyrmion crystal in centrosymmetric itinerant magnets, motivated from the recent experimental finding in GdRu$_2$Si$_2$ [N. D. Khanh $\mathit{et}$ $\mathit{al.}$, Nat. Nanotech. $\mathbf{15}$, 444 (2020)]. By simulated annealing for an effective spin model derived from the Kondo lattice model on a square lattice, we find that a square skyrmion crystal composed of a superposition of two spin helices is stabilized in a magnetic field by synergy between the positive biquadratic, bond-dependent anisotropic, and easy-axis anisotropic intera…
We propose a general mechanism of multiple-Q ordering with noncollinear and noncoplanar spin textures in itinerant magnets. By analyzing the fourth-order perturbation with respect to the spin-charge coupling, we find that the instability toward multiple-Q ordering is caused by (d-2)-dimensional connections of the Fermi surfaces in the extended Brillouin zone by the multiple-Q wave vectors: zero(one)-dimensional point (line) connections in the two(three)-dimensional systems. The instabilities are obtained as the "fixed points" in the two-parameter flow diagram, irrespective of lattice structure…
The double-exchange model, which has been extensively studied in the context of colossal magneto-resistance in perovskite manganese oxides, is known to exhibit a ferromagnetic metallic state at low temperatures because of the interplay between localized moments and itinerant electrons through the Hund's-rule coupling. Here we investigate numerically the ferromagnetic transition in the double-exchange model defined on the frustrated pyrochlore lattice as a simple model for ferromagnetic pyrochlore oxides. We demonstrate that the finite-size corrections are largely reduced by implementing averag…
We study the classical Heisenberg model on the geometrically frustrated Shastry-Sutherland (SS) lattice with additional Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction in the presence of an external magnetic field. We show that several noncollinear and noncoplanar magnetic phases, such as the flux, all-in/all-out, 3in-1out/3out-1in, and canted-flux phases are stabilized over wide ranges of parameters in the presence of the DM interaction. We discuss the role of DM interaction in stabilizing these complex magnetic phases. When coupled to these noncoplanar magnetic phases, itinerant electrons experience …
We present our theoretical results on an effective two-band double-exchange model on a pyrochlore lattice for understanding intricate phase competition in Mo pyrochlore oxides. The model includes the twofold degeneracy of $e_g'$ orbitals under trigonal field splitting, the interorbital Coulomb repulsion, the Hund's-rule coupling between itinerant $e_g'$ electrons and localized $a_{1g}$ spins, and the superexchange antiferromagnetic interaction between the $a_{1g}$ spins. By Monte Carlo simulation with treating the Coulomb repulsion at an unrestricted-type mean-field level, we obtain the low-te…
Magnetic domain walls, which are crucially important in both fundamental physics and technical applications, often have a preference in their form due to many different origins, such as the crystalline shape, lattice symmetry, and magnetic anisotropy. We theoretically investigate yet another origin stemming from the coupling to mobile charges in itinerant magnets. Performing a large-scale numerical simulation in a minimal model for itinerant magnets, i.e., the Kondo lattice model with classical localized spins, we show that the shape of magnetic domain walls depends on the electronic band stru…
The Goldstone mode in a helical magnetic phase, also known as the helimagnon, is a propagating mode with a highly anisotropic dispersion relation. Here we study theoretically the helimagnon excitations in a complex chiral ground state of pyrochlore antiferromagnets such as spinel CdCr2O4 and itinerant magnet YMn2. We show that the effective theory of the soft modes in the helical state possesses a symmetry similar to that of smectic liquid crystals. We compute the low-energy spin-wave spectrum based on a microscopic spin Hamiltonian and find a dispersion relation characteristic of the helimagn…
We theoretically study noncoplanar spin textures in polar magnetic conductors. Starting from the Kondo lattice model with the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, we derive an effective spin model with generalized Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interactions including the anisotropic and antisymmetric exchange interactions. By performing simulated annealing for the effective model, we find that a vortex crystal of Néel type is stabilized even in the absence of a magnetic field. Moreover, we demonstrate that a Bloch-type vortex crystal, which is usually associated with the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling,…
The anomalous Hall effect due to the spin chirality order and fluctuation is studied theoretically in a Kondo lattice model without the relativistic spin-orbit interaction. Even without the correlations of the localized spins, $σ_{xy}$ can emerge depending on the lattice structure and the spin anisotropy. We reveal the condition for this chirality-fluctuation driven mechanism for $σ_{xy}$. Our semiquantitative estimates for a pyrochlore oxide Nd$_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$ give a finite $σ_{xy} \sim 10 \Ohm^{-1} \cm^{-1}$ together with a high resistivity $ρ_{xx} \sim 10^{-4}-10^{-3} \Ohm \cm$, in agreement…
In a ferromagnet, the spin excitations are the well-studied magnons. In frustrated quantum magnets, long-range magnetic order fails to develop despite a large exchange coupling between the spins. In contrast to the magnons in conventional magnets, their spin excitations are poorly understood. Are they itinerant or localized? Here we show that the thermal Hall conductivity $κ_{xy}$ provides a powerful probe of spin excitations in the "quantum spin ice" pyrochlore Tb$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$. The thermal Hall response is large even though the material is transparent. The Hall response arises from spin exc…
We study theoretically the effects of f-d magnetic exchange interaction in the R$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$ pyrochlore iridates. The R$^{3+}$ f-electrons form localized magnetic doublets due to the crystal field environment, while the Ir$^{4+}$ d- electrons are more itinerant and feel a strong spin-orbit coupling. We construct and analyze a minimal model capturing this physics, treating the Ir subsystem using a Hubbard-type model. First neglecting the Hubbard interaction, we find Weyl semi-metal and Axion insulator phases induced by the f-d exchange. Next, we find that f-d exchange can cooperate with the …
Owing to comparably strong spin-orbit coupling and Hubbard interaction, iridium based 227 pyrochlore oxides harbor a rich confluence of competing magnetic orders and emergent multipolar Weyl quasiparticles. Here we show that this family of materials is predominantly susceptible toward the nucleation of electronic noncoplanar all-in all-out (AIAO) and three-in one-out (3I1O) orders, respectively transforming under the singlet $A_{2u}$ and triplet $T_{1u}$ representations, supporting octupolar and dipolar Weyl fermions, and favored by strong on-site Hubbard and nearest-neighbor ferromagnetic int…
A mutual interplay between the charge and spin degrees of freedom in itinerant magnets leads to a plethora of topological spin textures, such as magnetic skyrmion and vortex crystals, in both centrosymmetric and noncentrosymmetric hosts. Meanwhile, their stabilization has been extensively studied in the system including the classical localized spins. We here study a realization of the skyrmion crystal in the centrosymmetric triangular-lattice Hubbard model, where the itinerant nature of electrons plays a more significant role. By performing the self-consistent mean-field calculations, we find …
We report our numerical results for the effect of magnetic anisotropy on a Skyrmion crystal with a high topological number of two, which was recently discovered in an itinerant electron model [R. Ozawa, S. Hayami, and Y. Motome, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 147205 (2017)]. By performing numerical simulations based on the kernel polynomial method and the Langevin dynamics for the Kondo lattice model on a triangular lattice, we find that the topological property remains robust against the single-ion anisotropy, while the magnetic texture is deformed continuously. The resultant spin structure is charact…
Motivated by systems that can be seen as composed of two frustrated sublattices combined into a less frustrated total lattice, we study the double-exchange model with nearest-neighbor (NN) and next--nearest-neighbor (NNN) couplings on the honeycomb lattice. When adding NN hopping and its resulting double exchange to the antiferromagnetic (AFM) Heisenberg coupling, the resulting phase diagram is quite different from that of purely Heisenberg-like magnetic models and strongly depends on electron filling. For half filling, patterns of AFM dimers dominate, where the effective electronic bands rema…
It is demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally that the spin chirality associated with a noncoplanar spin configuration produces a magneto-optical effect. Numerical study of the two-band Hubbard model on a triangle cluster shows that the optical Hall conductivity $σ_{xy}(ω)$ is proportional to the spin chirality. The detailed comparative experiments on pyrochlore-type molybdates $R_2$Mo$_2$O$_7$ with $R=$Nd (Ising-like moments) and $R=$Gd (Heisenberg-like ones) clearly distinguishes the two mechanisms, i.e., spin chirality and spin-orbit interactions. It is concluded that for $R$=Nd,…
We theoretically investigate the low-temperature phase of the recently synthesized Lu$_2$Mo$_2$O$_5$N$_2$ material, an extraordinarily rare realization of a $S=1/2$ three-dimensional pyrochlore Heisenberg antiferromagnet in which Mo$^{5+}$ are the $S=1/2$ magnetic species. Despite a Curie-Weiss temperature ($Θ_{\rm CW}$) of $-121(1)$ K, experiments have found no signature of magnetic ordering $or$ spin freezing down to $T^*\approx0.5$ K. Using density functional theory, we find that the compound is well described by a Heisenberg model with exchange parameters up to third nearest neighbors. The…
Magnetism of ruthernium pyrochlore oxides A2Ru2O7 (A = Hg, Cd, Ca), whose electronic properties within a localized ion picture are characterized by non-degenerate t2g orbitals (Ru5+, 4d3) and thereby subject to geometrical frustration, has been investigated by muon spin rotation/relaxation (muSR) technique. The A cation (mostly divalent) was varied to examine the effect of covalency (Hg > Cd > Ca) on their electronic property. In a sample with A = Hg that exhibits a clear metal-insulator (MI) transition below >> 100 K (which is associated with a weak structural transition), a nearly commensura…
We investigate the transport properties of itinerant electrons interacting with a background of localized spins in a correlated paramagnetic phase of the pyrochlore lattice. We find a residual resistivity at zero temperature due to the scattering of electrons by the static dipolar spin-spin correlation that characterizes the metallic Coulomb phase. As temperature increases, thermally excited topological defects, also known as magnetic monopoles, reduce the spin correlation, hence suppressing electron scattering. Combined with the usual scattering processes in metals at higher temperatures, thi…
The $f$-$d$ magnetic exchange interaction is considered to be a key ingredient for many exotic topological phases in pyrochlore iridates. Here, we have investigated the evolution of structural, magnetic and electronic properties in doped pyrochlore iridate, (Y$_{1-x}$Pr$_x$)$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$. Apart from geometrical frustration, pyrochlore iridates are well known for its active spin-orbit coupling effect. The substitution of Pr$^{3+}$ (4$f^2$) for the nonmagnetic Y$^{3+}$ (4$d^0$) acts as a magnetic doping, which provides an ideal platform to study $f$-$d$ exchange interaction without altering th…
We investigate the necessary conditions for the emergence of complex, noncoplanar magnetic configurations in a Kondo lattice model with classical local moments on the geometrically frustrated Shastry-Sutherland lattice and their evolution in an external magnetic field. We demonstrate that topologically nontrivial spin textures, including a new canted flux state, with nonzero scalar chirality arise dynamically from realistic short-range interactions. Our results establish that a finite Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction is necessary for the emergence of these novel magnetic states when the …
We discuss the magnetic properties of a Sm$_{2}$Mo$_{2}$O$_{7}$ single crystal as investigated by means of different experimental techniques. In the literature, a conventional itinerant ferromagnetic state is reported for the Mo$^{4+}$ sublattice below $\sim 78$ K. However, our results of dc magnetometry, muon spin spectroscopy ($μ^{+}$SR) and high-harmonics magnetic ac susceptibility unambiguously evidence highly disordered conditions in this phase, in spite of the crystalline and chemical order. This disordered magnetic state shares several common features with amorphous ferromagnetic alloys…
We investigate how to engineer an antisymmetric spin-split band structure under spin density waves with finite ordering wave vectors in centrosymmetric systems without the relativistic spin-orbit coupling. On the basis of a perturbative analysis for the spin-charge coupled model in centrosymmetric itinerant magnets, we show that nonzero chiral-type bilinear and biquadratic spin cross products in momentum space under the magnetic orderings are related to an antisymmetric spin polarization in the electronic band structure. We apply the derived formula to the single-$Q$ cycloidal spiral and doubl…
We present the results of Monte Carlo simulation for a Kondo lattice model in which itinerant electrons interact with Ising spins with spin-ice type easy-axis anisotropy on a pyrochlore lattice. We demonstrate the efficiency of the truncated polynomial expansion algorithm, which enables a large scale simulation, in comparison with a conventional algorithm using the exact diagonalization. Computing the sublattice magnetization, we show the convergence of the data with increasing the number of polynomials and truncation distance.
The magnetic hedgehog lattice (HL) is a noncoplanar magnetic texture with a periodic array of magnetic monopoles and anti-monopoles. Despite phenomenological and numerical studies thus far, there remain open issues on the microscopic origin, especially with respect to the recent experimental findings of two different types of HLs even at zero magnetic field. Here, we study the stability of the HLs for an effective spin model with long-range interactions arising from itinerant nature of electrons. By variational calculations and simulated annealing, we find that the HLs are stabilized in the gr…
We explore the magnetic phases in a Kondo lattice model on the geometrically frustrated Shastry-Sutherland lattice at metallic electron densities, searching for noncollinear and noncoplanar spin textures. Motivated by experimental observations in many rare-earth-based frustrated metallic magnets, we treat the local moments as classical spins and set the coupling between the itinerant electrons and local moments as the largest energy scale in the problem. Our results show that a noncollinear flux state is stabilized over an extended range of Hamiltonian parameters. These spin states can be quen…
An anomalous Hall insulator without magnetic long-range ordering is theoretically reported in the absence of the relativistic spin-orbit coupling. It is realized in itinerant electrons coupled with the Ising spins on a <111> kagome plane of pyrochlore spin ice in applied magnetic field. We find that the kagome-ice type local spin correlation in the magnetization plateau state opens a charge gap without magnetic ordering, which results in quantization of the Hall conductivity. By Monte Carlo simulation, we identify the anomalous Hall insulating region in the magnetic phase diagram, in addition …
We present a theoretical framework for evaluating effective interactions between localized spins mediated by itinerant electrons in double-exchange models. Performing the expansion with respect to the spin-dependent part of the electron hopping terms, we show a systematic way of constructing the effective spin model in the large Hund's coupling limit. As a benchmark, we examine the accuracy of this method by comparing the results with the numerical solutions for the spin-ice type model on a pyrochlore lattice. We also discuss an extension of the method to the double-exchange models with Heisen…
We present a systematic analysis on the basis of ab initio calculations and many-body perturbation theory for clarifying the dominant fluctuation in complex charge-spin-orbital coupled systems. For a tight-binding multiband model obtained from the maximally-localized Wannier function analysis of the band structure by the local density approximation, we take into account electron correlations at the level of random phase approximation. To identify the dominant fluctuation, we carry out the eigenmode analysis of the generalized susceptibility that includes all the multiple degrees of freedom: ch…
Magnetic orders characterized by multiple ordering vectors harbor noncollinear and noncoplanar spin textures and can be a source of unusual electronic properties through the spin Berry phase mechanism. We theoretically show that such multiple-$Q$ states are stabilized in itinerant magnets in the form of superpositions of collinear up-up-down-down (UUDD) spin states, which accompany the density waves of vector and scalar chirality. The result is drawn by examining the ground state of the Kondo lattice model with classical localized moments, especially when the Fermi surface is tuned to be parti…
Strongly correlated fractional quantum Hall liquids support fractional excitations, which can be understood in terms of adiabatic flux insertion arguments. A second route to fractionalization is through the coupling of weakly interacting electrons to topologically nontrivial backgrounds such as in polyacetylene. Here we demonstrate that electronic fractionalization combining features of both these mechanisms occurs in noncoplanar itinerant magnetic systems, where integer quantum Hall physics arises from the coupling of electrons to the magnetic background. The topologically stable magnetic vor…
$\mathbb{Z}_2$ Vortex Crystals in Tetrahedral Antiferromagnets: Fractional Charges and Topological Magnons
Aoyama Gakuin University(青山学院大学);University of Münster(明斯特大学);Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz(美因茨约翰内斯·古腾堡大学);University of Duisburg-Essen(杜伊斯堡-埃森大学)
Strong electronic interactions and spin orbit coupling can be conducive for realizing novel broken symmetry phases supporting quasiparticles with nontrivial band topology. 227 pyrochlore iridates provide a suitable material platform for studying such emergent phenomena where both topology and competing orders play important roles. In contrast to the most members of this material class, which are thought to display "all-in all-out" (AIAO) type magnetically ordered low-temperature insulating ground states, Pr$_2$Ir$_2$O$_7$ remains metallic while exhibiting "spin ice" (SI) correlations at low te…