Indirect Chiral Magnetic Exchange through Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya--Enhanced RKKY Interactions in Manganese Oxide Chains on Ir(100)

Abstract

Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction even if their wave functions lack direct overlap. Theory predicts that spin-orbit scattering leads to a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya type enhancement of this indirect exchange interaction, giving rise to chiral exchange terms. Here we present a combined spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy, angle-resolved photoemission, and density functional theory study of MnO${}_2$ chains on Ir(100). Whereas we find antiferromagnetic Mn--Mn coupling along the chain, the inter-chain coupling across the non-magnetic Ir substrate turns out to be chiral with a $120^{\circ }$ rotation between adjacent MnO${}_2$ chains. Calculations reveal that the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction results in spin spirals with a periodicity in agreement with experiment. Our findings confirm the existence of indirect chiral magnetic exchange, potentially giving rise to exotic phenomena, such as chiral spin-liquid states in spin ice systems or the emergence of new quasiparticles.

16 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Chiral RKKY interaction in Pr2Ir2O7
• Chiral magnetism of magnetic adatoms generated by Rashba electrons
• Magnetic Skyrmionic Polarons

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