Tunable dynamical magnetoelectric effect in antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ films

Abstract

More than forty years ago, axion was postulated as an elementary particle with a low mass and weak interaction in particle physics to solve the strong $\mathcal{C}\mathcal{P}$ (charge conjugation and parity) puzzle. Axions are also considered as a possible component of dark matter of the universe. However, the existence of axions in nature has not been confirmed. Interestingly, axions arise as pseudoscalar fields derived from the Chern-Simons theory in condensed matter physics. In antiferromagnetic insulators, the axion field can become dynamical induced by spin-wave excitations and exhibits rich exotic phenomena, such as, the chiral magnetic effect, axionic polariton and so on. However, the study of the dynamical axion field is rare due to the lack of real materials. Recently, MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ was discovered to be an antiferromagnetic topological insulator with a quantized axion field protected by the inversion symmetry $\mathcal{P}$ and the magnetic-crystalline symmetry $\mathcal{S}$. Here, we studied MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ films in which both the $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{S}$ symmetries are spontaneously broken and found that the dynamical axion field and largely tunable dynamical magnetoelectric effects can be realized through tuning the thickness of MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ films, the temperature and the element substitution. Our results open a broad avenue to study axion dynamics in antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ and related materials, and also is hopeful to promote the research of dark matter.

arXiv comment6 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Observation of the Axion quasiparticle in 2D MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$
• Floquet engineering of magnetic topological insulator MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ films
• Ultrafast coherent interlayer phonon dynamics in atomically thin layers of MnBi2Te4
• Observation of magnetism induced topological edge state in antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi4Te7
• Nonlinear level attraction of cavity axion polariton in antiferromagnetic topological insulator
• Magnetoelectricity in two-dimensional materials
• Topological Magnetoelectric Response in Ferromagnetic Axion Insulators
• A Dirac-fermion approach and its application to design high Chern numbers in magnetic topological insulator multilayers
• Symmetry-driven anisotropic coupling effect in antiferromagnetic topological insulator: Mechanism for high-Chern-number quantum anomalous Hall state
• Phononic dynamical axion in magnetic Dirac insulators
• High-Chern-number Quantum anomalous Hall insulators in mixing-stacked MnBi${}_2$Te${}_4$ thin films
• Magnetic precession induced spin accumulation in collinear antiferromagnets