Nonrelativistic Piezomagnetic Effect in an Organic Altermagnet

TL;DR

This paper theoretically demonstrates a nonrelativistic piezomagnetic effect in an organic altermagnet, showing how shear stress induces net magnetization through lattice distortion and spin splitting mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a novel nonrelativistic mechanism for piezomagnetism in altermagnets, emphasizing the role of multi-orbital effects and lattice distortion.

Findings

Piezomagnetic effect induces net magnetization at finite temperatures.

Magnetization arises from lattice distortion-induced ferrimagnetic spin structure.

Effect diminishes with strong dimerization, highlighting multi-orbital importance.

Abstract

We theoretically study the piezomagnetic effect on the altermagnetic state in $\kappa$-type molecular conductors, focusing on its nonrelativistic mechanism. By introducing shear stress as a monoclinic distortion, we evaluate variations in the effective tight-binding model using first-principles calculations. Using the derived parameters, we investigate the Hubbard model and its effective Heisenberg model on the two-dimensional (distorted) $\kappa$-type lattice within mean-field approximation. We show that the system exhibits the piezomagnetic effect, i.e., a net magnetization induced at finite temperatures in the undoped insulating state and both in the ground state and at finite temperatures upon doping. In a real-space picture, this uniform magnetization arises from the ferrimagnetic spin structure due to inequivalent spin sites induced by lattice distortion. Meanwhile, in a momentum-space picture, it stems from the {\it s}-wave spin splitting of the electron and magnon bands, independent of spin-orbit coupling. We find that this nonrelativistic piezomagnetism remains finite, but becomes smaller in the limit of strong dimerization where the energy gap between the bonding and antibonding orbitals is infinitely large and the {\it d}-wave altermagnetic spin splitting is absent, highlighting the importance of the multi-orbital nature.