Ferromagnetism and glassiness on the surface of topological insulators

TL;DR

This paper explores how magnetic adatoms on topological insulator surfaces organize magnetically, revealing transitions between ferromagnetic, spin-density-wave, and spin glass states depending on doping levels and anisotropy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of magnetic ordering patterns on topological insulator surfaces, including the discovery of ferromagnetic spin glass states and phase transitions.

Findings

Magnetic impurities form spin-density waves at certain doping levels.

Strong anisotropy leads to ferromagnetic ground states at low to moderate doping.

High doping results in ferromagnetic spin glass states with zero net magnetization.

Abstract

We investigate the nature of the ordering among magnetic adatoms, randomly deposited on the surface of topological insulators. Restricting ourselves to dilute impurity and weak coupling (between itinerant fermion and magnetic impurities) limit, we show that for arbitrary amount of chemical doping away from the apex of the surface Dirac cone the magnetic impurities tend to arrange themselves in a spin-density-wave pattern, with the periodicity approximately $\pi/k_F$, where $k_F$ is the Fermi wave vector, when magnetic moment for impurity adatoms is isotropic. However, when magnetic moment possesses strong Ising or easy-axis anisotropy, pursuing both analytical and numerical approaches we show that the ground state is ferromagnetic for low to moderate chemical doping, despite the fragmentation of the system into multiple ferromagnetic islands. For high doping away from the Dirac point as well, the system appears to fragment into many ferromagnetic islands, but the magnetization in these islands is randomly distributed. Such magnetic ordering with net zero magnetization, is referred here as ferromagnetic spin glass, which is separated from the pure ferromagnet state by a first order phase transition. We generalize our analysis for cubic topological insulators (supporting three Dirac cones on a surface) and demonstrate that the nature of magnetic orderings and the transition between them remains qualitatively the same. We also discuss the possible relevance of our analysis to recent experiments.