A publication with Libor Šmejkal about x-ray magnetic circular dichroism in altermagnetic -MnTe has been published in Physical Review Letters.
In this work they use symmetry, ab initio theory, and experiments to explore x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) in the altermagnetic class. As a representative material for our XMCD study they choose -MnTe with compensated antiparallel magnetic order in which an anomalous Hall effect has been already demonstrated. They predict and experimentally confirm a characteristic XMCD line shape for compensated moments lying in a plane perpendicular to the light propagation vector. Their results highlight the distinct phenomenology in altermagnets of this time-reversal symmetry breaking response, and its potential utility for element-specific spectroscopy and microscopy.