Electrically Controllable Crystal Chirality Magneto-Optical Effects in Collinear Antiferromagnets

TL;DR

This paper theoretically uncovers crystal chirality magneto-optical effects in collinear antiferromagnets, showing they depend on crystal structure chirality and can be controlled electrically, offering new ways to manipulate magneto-optical properties.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of crystal chirality magneto-optical effects and demonstrates their dependence on crystal structure chirality in antiferromagnets, a novel insight beyond spin chirality effects.

Findings

CCMO effects depend on crystal chirality and exist in materials like RuO₂ and CoNb₃S₆.

Reversing crystal chirality changes the sign of CCMO effects.

Magnitudes of CCMO spectra can be tuned by reorienting the Néel vector with an electric field.

Abstract

The spin chirality, created by magnetic atoms, has been comprehensively understood to generate and control the magneto-optical effects. In comparison, the role of the crystal chirality that relates to nonmagnetic atoms has received much less attention. Here, we theoretically discover the crystal chirality magneto-optical (CCMO) effects, which depend on the chirality of crystal structures that originates from the rearrangement of nonmagnetic atoms. We show that the CCMO effects exist in many collinear antiferromagnets, such as RuO$_{2}$ and CoNb$_{3}$S$_{6}$, which has a local and global crystal chirality, respectively. The key character of the CCMO effects is the sign change if the crystal chirality reverses. The magnitudes of the CCMO spectra can be effectively manipulated by reorienting the N\'eel vector with the help of an external electric field, and the spectral integrals are found to be proportional to magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy.