Berlin 2024 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 52: Altermagnets

MA 52.13: Talk

Friday, March 22, 2024, 12:45–13:00, EB 202

Inverse Faraday Effect in altermagnets from first-principles — •Theodoros Adamantopoulos^1,2, Maximilian Merte^1,2,3, Frank Freimuth^1,3, Dongwook Go^1,3, Stefan Blügel¹, and Yuriy Mokrousov^1,3 — ¹Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA, 52425 Jülich, Germany — ²Department of Physics, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany — ³Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

While the understanding of altermagnetism is still at a very early stage, it is expected to play a role in various fields of condensed matter research, for example spintronics, caloritronics and superconductivity [1]. In the field of optical magnetism, it is still unclear whether altermagnets can exhibit magnetisation dynamics effects distinct from ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. Here we choose RuO₂, a prototype metallic altermagnet with a giant spin splitting, and CoF₂, an experimentally known insulating altermagnet, to study the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) in altermagnets from first-principles. We predict large and canted induced spin and orbital moments after the optical excitation which are distinct on each magnetic sublattice. By resorting to microscopic tools we interpret our results in terms of the altermagnetic spin splittings and of their reciprocal space distribution. Overall, in accordance with our symmetry analysis, we demonstrate that the behavior of altermagnets when exposed to optical pulses incorporates both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic features.

[1] L. Smejkal et al. PRX12, 040501 (2022).

Keywords: Altermagnets; Optical magnetism; First-principles