Papers

Peer-reviewed
Dec, 2017

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in alpha-Fe2O3 measured by magnetic circular dichroism in resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering

PHYSICAL REVIEW B
  • Jun Miyawaki
  • ,
  • Shigemasa Suga
  • ,
  • Hidenori Fujiwara
  • ,
  • Masato Urasaki
  • ,
  • Hidekazu Ikeno
  • ,
  • Hideharu Niwa
  • ,
  • Hisao Kiuchi
  • ,
  • Yoshihisa Harada

Volume
96
Number
21
First page
214420
Last page
Language
English
Publishing type
Research paper (scientific journal)
DOI
10.1103/PhysRevB.96.214420
Publisher
AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Fe L-2,L-3-edge x-ray absorption spectra (XAS) and magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) in resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) of alpha-Fe2O3 were measured to identify the electronic structure responsible for its weak ferromagnetism caused by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) at room temperature. In contrast to negligible MCD in XAS, MCD in RIXS (RIXS-MCD) was clearly observed in the dd excitation at 1.8 eV via excitation to charge-transfer states. Furthermore, RIXS-MCD showed a crystal orientation dependence, indicating that the observed RIXS-MCD originated from DMI. The observed RIXS-MCD is well described by ab initio charge-transfer multiplet calculations, revealing that the RIXS-MCD derives from spin flip excitations at delocalized e(g) orbitals. By the combination of the experiments and calculations, RIXS-MCD has unraveled that the origin of DMI in alpha-Fe2O3 is the e(g) orbitals, which are strongly hybridized with the 2p orbitals of oxygen atoms. The results demonstrate the importance of RIXS-MCD for identifying the electronic structure related to DMI.

Link information
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.96.214420
Web of Science
https://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=JSTA_CEL&SrcApp=J_Gate_JST&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT=WOS:000417920200002&DestApp=WOS_CPL
ID information
  • DOI : 10.1103/PhysRevB.96.214420
  • ISSN : 2469-9950
  • eISSN : 2469-9969
  • Web of Science ID : WOS:000417920200002

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