27.01.2024 New Joint Publication in Antiferromagnetic Spintronics

A joint publication with Jairo Sinova, Libor Ċ mejkal and Helen Gomonay about phase transitions associated with magnetic-field induced topological orbital momenta in a non-collinear antiferromagnet has been published in Nature communications.

They show that in polycrystalline Mn3Zn0.5Ge0.5N with non-collinear antiferromagnetic order, changes in the diagonal and, rather unexpected, off-diagonal components of the resistivity tensor occur at low temperatures indicating subtle transitions between magnetic phases of different symmetry. This is supported by neutron scattering and explained within a phenomenological model which suggests that the phase transitions in magnetic field are associated with field induced topological orbital momenta. The fact that they observe transitions between spin phases in a polycrystal, where effects of crystalline anisotropy are cancelled suggests that they are only controlled by exchange interactions. The observation of an off-diagonal resistivity extends the possibilities for realising antiferromagnetic spintronics with polycrystalline materials.

You can find the publication under Nat. Comm. 15, 822 (2024).