Charge density waves in multiple-$Q$ spin states

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework to understand charge density waves induced by complex spin textures in itinerant magnets, revealing their potential to identify magnetic orderings and their origins.

Contribution

It derives a general formula linking charge and spin density waves for multiple-Q magnetic states, including noncollinear and noncoplanar orders, and demonstrates its predictive power.

Findings

Charge density waves can distinguish complex spin textures.

Charge waves are enhanced at commensurate electron fillings.

Spin-orbit coupling induces additional charge density modulations.

Abstract

Coupling between spin and charge degrees of freedom in electrons is a source of various electronic and magnetic properties of solids. We theoretically study charge density waves induced by the spin-charge coupling in the presence of magnetic orderings in itinerant magnets. By performing a perturbative calculation in the weak-coupling limit of the Kondo lattice model, we derive a useful formula for the relationship between charge and spin density waves, which can be applied to any magnetic orderings, including noncollinear and noncoplanar ones composed of multiple spin density waves called multiple-$Q$ magnetic orderings. We demonstrate the predictive power for single-$Q$ and double-$Q$ states including skyrmion and meron-antimeron crystals on a square lattice, in comparison with the numerical calculations. Moreover, we show that the charge density waves contain richer information than the spin density waves, and are indeed useful in distinguishing the spin textures with similar spin structure factors. We discuss the relation to bond modulation in terms of the kinetic bond energy and the vector spin chirality. We also perform numerical calculations beyond the perturbative regime and find that the charge density waves can be enhanced when the electron filling is commensurate. Furthermore, we investigate the effect of the spin-orbit coupling, which can lead to additional charge density waves owing to effective anisotropic magnetic interactions in momentum space. Our result will provide a way to identify complex magnetic orderings and their origins from the charge modulations.