Observation of plaid-like spin splitting in a noncoplanar antiferromagnet

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Zhu, Yu-Peng; Chen, Xiaobing; Liu, Xiang-Rui; Liu, Yuntian; Liu, Pengfei; Zha, Heming; Qu, Gexing; Hong, Caiyun; Li, Jiayu; Jiang, Zhicheng; Ma, Xiao-Ming; Hao, Yu-Jie; Zhu, Ming-Yuan; Liu, Wenjing; Zeng, Meng; Jayaram, Sreehari; Lenger, Malik; Ding, Jianyang; Mo, Shu; Tanaka, Kiyohisa; Arita, Masashi; Liu, Zhengtai; Ye, Mao; Shen, Dawei; Wrachtrup, Joerg; Huang, Yaobo; He, Rui-Hua; Qiao, Shan; Liu, Qihang; Liu, Chang
• 署名单位: Southern University of Science & Technology; Southern University of Science & Technology; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Shanghai Institute of Microsystem & Information Technology, CAS; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Institute of Physics, CAS; Westlake University; University of Stuttgart; University of Stuttgart; University of Stuttgart; National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) - Japan; Institute for Molecular Science (IMS); Hiroshima University; Chinese Academy of Sciences; Shanghai Advanced Research Institute, CAS
• 刊物名称: Nature
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0028-4315
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07023-w
• 发表日期: 2024-02-15
• 页码: 523-+
• 关键词: magnetoresistance; spintronics; wannier90; tool

摘要

Spatial, momentum and energy separation of electronic spins in condensed-matter systems guides the development of new devices in which spin-polarized current is generated and manipulated(1-3). Recent attention on a set of previously overlooked symmetry operations in magnetic materials(4) leads to the emergence of a new type of spin splitting, enabling giant and momentum-dependent spin polarization of energy bands on selected antiferromagnets(5-10). Despite the ever-growing theoretical predictions, the direct spectroscopic proof of such spin splitting is still lacking. Here we provide solid spectroscopic and computational evidence for the existence of such materials. In the noncoplanar antiferromagnet manganese ditelluride (MnTe2), the in-plane components of spin are found to be antisymmetric about the high-symmetry planes of the Brillouin zone, comprising a plaid-like spin texture in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) ground state. Such an unconventional spin pattern, further found to diminish at the high-temperature paramagnetic state, originates from the intrinsic AFM order instead of spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Our finding demonstrates a new type of quadratic spin texture induced by time-reversal breaking, placing AFM spintronics on a firm basis and paving the way for studying exotic quantum phenomena in related materials.