Observation of spontaneous x-ray magnetic circular dichroism in a chiral antiferromagnet

Abstract

X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) signals are usually absent in antiferromagnets. In this letter, we report the observation of spontaneous XMCD spectra originating from the inverse triangular spin structure, or the polarization of the cluster magnetic octupole, in the chiral antiferromagnet Mn${}_3$Sn thin film. The result is consistent with the recent theoretical predictions that the inverse triangular spin structure can give rise to finite XMCD signals in the absence of net magnetization [J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 89, 083703 (2020) and Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 157402 (2021)].

References in corpus (8)

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• Cluster multipole theory for anomalous Hall effect in antiferromagnets
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• Presence of x-ray magnetic circular dichroism effect for zero-magnetization state in antiferromagnetism
• Anisotropic spin distribution and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in the layered ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ba,K)(Zn,Mn)${}_2$As${}_2$

Cited by in corpus (10)

• Epitaxial growth of high quality $M{n}_{3}Sn$ thin films by pulsed laser deposition
• Antiferromagnetic real-space configuration probed by dichroism in scattered x-ray beams with orbital angular momentum
• Circular Dichroism in Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering: Probing Altermagnetic Domains in MnTe
• Giant X-ray circular dichroism in a time-reversal invariant altermagnet
• The free energy of twisting spins in Mn${}_3$Sn
• Sum rules for x-ray circular and linear dichroism based on complete magnetic multipole basis
• X-ray magnetic circular dichroism originating from the $T_z$ term in collinear altermagnets under trigonal crystal field
• On the Néel Vector Dependence of X-ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism in Altermagnets
• Single-ion anisotropy driven chiral magnetic order in a spin-1 antiferromagnetic chain
• Detection of ferroic octupole ordering in $d$-wave altermagnetic rutile-type compounds