Conical spin order with chiral quadrupole helix in CsCuCl3

Abstract

Here we report a resonant x-ray diffraction (RXD) study at the Cu L3 edge on the multi-chiral system CsCuCl3, exhibiting helical magnetic order in a chiral crystal structure. RXD is a powerful technique to disentangle electronic degrees of freedom due to its sensitivity to electric monopoles (charge), magnetic dipoles (spin), and electric quadrupoles (orbital). We characterize electric quadrupole moments around Cu ascribed to the unoccupied Cu 3d orbital, whose quantization axis is off the basal plane. Detailed investigation of magnetic reflections reveals additional sinusoidal modulations along the principal axis superimposed on the reported helical structure, i.e., a longitudinal conical (helical-butterfly) structure. The out-of-plane modulations imply significant spin-orbit interaction despite S = 1/2 of Cu2+.

arXiv comment17 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Skyrmion Lattice in a Chiral Magnet
• Direct transition from a disordered to a multiferroic phase on a triangular lattice
• Single domain magnetic helicity and triangular chirality in structurally enantiopure Ba3NbFe3Si2O14
• Most spin-1/2 transition-metal ions do have single ion anisotropy
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• Quadrupole moments in chiral material DyFe3(BO3)4 observed by resonant x-ray diffraction

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• Non-chiral 1T-TiSe2 creates circular dichroism in resonant X-ray diffraction via multipole scattering interference
• Circular dichroism in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering from birefringence in CuO
• Tuning chirality amplitude at ultrafast timescales