SKM 2023 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 50: Magnetic Domain Walls (non-skyrmionic)

MA 50.7: Talk

Friday, March 31, 2023, 11:00–11:15, POT 6

Visualisation of an 4f-antiferromagnetic domain pattern in multiferroic Dy_0.7Tb_0.3FeO₃ — •Yannik Zemp¹, Mads C. Weber^1,2, Ehsan Hassanpour^1,3, Thomas Lottermoser¹, Yusuke Tokunaga⁴, Yasujiro Taguchi⁵, Yoshinori Tokura^5,6, and Manfred Fiebig¹ — ¹Department of Materials, ETH Zurich — ²IMMM, Le Mans Université — ³UDEM Inselspital, University of Bern — ⁴Department of Advanced Materials Science, University of Tokyo — ⁵RIKEN CEMS, Japan — ⁶Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo

We visualize the antiferromagnetic (AFM) domain pattern of the 4f-rare-earth subsystem in Dy_0.7Tb_0.3FeO₃. To do so, we exploit the unique order-parameter interaction in the multiferroic phase of this material, where the magnetic rare-earth- and iron subsystems induce ferroelectricity. By magnetic-field cooling into the multiferroic phase, we force the 4f-rare-earth- and ferroelectric domain pattern to be identical. We can then access the former by imaging the latter using optical second harmonic generation, which is very sensitive to a breaking of inversion symmetry. The 4f-AFM domains form stripes with a thickness of several 10 µm along the antiferromagnetic easy axis. As a consequence, the ferroelectric domains are forced to form energetically unfavourable head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain walls. Also, the domain pattern is very dissimilar to the weakly ferromagnetic bubble-domain structure of the iron sublattice that is present at higher temperatures. These observations show that the rare-earth system orders independently from the other magnetic- and electric influences.