Symmetry analysis with spin crystallographic groups: Disentangling effects free of spin-orbit coupling in emergent electromagnetism

TL;DR

This paper introduces a systematic symmetry analysis using spin crystallographic groups to identify and classify emergent electromagnetic responses in magnetic materials, independent of spin-orbit coupling effects.

Contribution

The study develops a novel symmetry analysis framework based on spin crystallographic groups, enabling detailed separation of spin and orbital effects in magnetic materials.

Findings

Identified physical properties in 1500 magnetic materials.

Classified spin Hall effects from nonrelativistic spin-charge coupling.

Revealed richer symmetry and emergent responses compared to traditional methods.

Abstract

Recent studies identified spin-order-driven phenomena such as spin-charge interconversion without relying on the relativistic spin-orbit interaction. Those physical properties can be prominent in systems containing light magnetic atoms due to sizable exchange splitting and may pave the way for realization of giant responses correlated with the spin degree of freedom. In this paper, we present a systematic symmetry analysis based on the spin crystallographic groups and identify the physical property of a vast number of magnetic materials up to 1500 in total. By decoupling the spin and orbital degrees of freedom, our analysis enables us to take a closer look into the relation between the dimensionality of spin structures and the resultant physical properties and to identify the spin and orbital contributions separately. In stark contrast to the established analysis with magnetic space groups, the spin crystallographic group manifests richer symmetry including spin-translation symmetry and leads to emergent responses. For representative examples, we discuss the geometrical nature of the anomalous Hall effect and magnetoelectric effect and classify the spin Hall effect arising from the nonrelativistic spin-charge coupling. Using the power of computational analysis, we apply our symmetry analysis to a wide range of magnets, encompassing complex magnets such as those with noncoplanar spin structures as well as collinear and coplanar magnets. We identify emergent multipoles relevant to physical responses and argue that our method provides a systematic tool for exploring sizable electromagnetic responses driven by spin order.