2010/07/16 by Masahito Mochizuki, Nobuo Furukawa, Naoto Nagaosa · 9 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Multiferroics and related materials #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.105.037205
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 037205 (2010) · 5 pages, 4 figures, typos corrected
openalex publication_date 2010/07/16 · arxiv created 2011/02/18 · arxiv updated 2011/02/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We theoretically study origins of the ferroelectricity in the multiferroic phases of the rare-earth (R) Mn perovskites, RMnO(3), by constructing a realistic spin model including the spin-phonon coupling, which reproduces the entire experimental phase diagram in the plane of temperature and Mn-O-Mn bond angle for the first time. Surprisingly we reveal a significant contribution of the symmetric (S·S)-type magnetostriction to the ferroelectricity even in a spin-spiral-based multiferroic phase, which can be larger than the usually expected antisymmetric (S×S)-type contribution. This explains well the nontrivial behavior of the electric polarization. We also predict the noncollinear deformation of the E-type spin structure and a wide coexisting regime of the E and spiral states, which resolve several experimental puzzles.