Confirming the trilinear form of the optical magnetoelectric effect in the polar honeycomb antiferromagnet Co₂Mo₃O₈

2021/11/19 by Reschke, S., Farkas, D. G., Strinić, A. +9 · 1 citation
#FOS: Physical sciences #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2111.10217

Abstract

Magnetoelectric phenomena are intimately linked to relativistic effects and also require the material to break spatial inversion symmetry and time reversal invariance. Magnetoelectric coupling can substantially affect light-matter interaction and lead to non-reciprocal light propagation. Here, we confirm on a fully experimental basis, without invoking either symmetry-based or material-specific assumptions, that the optical magnetoelectric effect in materials with non-parallel magnetization (\boldsymbolM) and electric polarization (\boldsymbolP) generates a trilinear term in the refractive index, δn∝\boldsymbolk⋅(\boldsymbolP×\boldsymbolM), where \boldsymbolk is the propagation vector of light. Its sharp magnetoelectric resonances, that are simultaneously electric and magnetic dipole active excitations, make Co₂Mo₃O₈ an ideal compound to demonstrate this fundamental relation via independent variation of \boldsymbolM, \boldsymbolP and \boldsymbolk. Remarkably, the material shows almost perfect one-way transparency in moderate magnetic fields at some of the magnetoelectric resonances.

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