Multiple-$Q$ magnetic orders in Rashba-Dresselhaus metals

TL;DR

This paper investigates complex magnetic textures in noncentrosymmetric Kondo lattice models with Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings, revealing multiple-Q orderings and their origins through advanced numerical and variational methods.

Contribution

It uncovers novel multiple-Q magnetic orderings driven by spin-orbit coupling-induced Fermi surface instabilities, including a sextuple-Q state with a checkerboard spin scalar chirality pattern.

Findings

Discovered a sextuple-Q magnetic order with checkerboard scalar chirality.

Identified multiple-Q states arising from Fermi surface instabilities.

Revealed richer magnetic textures due to combined spin-charge and spin-orbit couplings.

Abstract

We study magnetic textures realized in noncentrosymmetric Kondo lattice models, in which localized magnetic moments weakly interact with itinerant electrons subject to Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. By virtue of state-of-the-art numerical simulations as well as variational calculations, we uncover versatile multiple-$Q$ orderings under zero magnetic field, which are found to originate in the instabilities of the Fermi surface whose spin degeneracy is lifted by the spin-orbit couplings. In the case with equally-strong Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings, which is known to realize a persistent spin helix in semiconductor quantum wells, we discover a sextuple-$Q$ magnetic ordering with a checkerboard-like spatial pattern of the spin scalar chirality. In the presence of either Rashba or Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling, we find out another multiple-$Q$ ordering, which is distinct from Skyrmion crystals discussed under the same symmetry. Our results indicate that the cooperation of the spin-charge and spin-orbit couplings brings about richer magnetic textures than those studied within effective spin models. The situations would be experimentally realized, e.g., in noncentrosymmetric heavy-fermion compounds and heterostructures of spin-orbit coupled metals and magnetic insulators.