2016/12/31 by Dominik Maximilian Juraschek, Michael Fechner, Alexander V. Balatsky +1 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevmaterials.1.014401
published as Phys. Rev. Materials 1, 014401 (2017)
arxiv created 2017/04/10 · arxiv updated 2017/06/28
An appealing mechanism for inducing multiferroicity in materials is the generation of electric polarization by a spatially varying magnetization that is coupled to the lattice through the spin-orbit interaction. Here we describe the reciprocal effect, in which a time-dependent electric polarization induces magnetization even in materials with no existing spin structure. We develop a formalism for this dynamical multiferroic effect in the case for which the polarization derives from optical phonons, and compute the strength of the phonon Zeeman effect, which is the solid-state equivalent of the well-established vibrational Zeeman effect in molecules, using density functional theory. We further show that a recently observed behavior -- the resonant excitation of a magnon by optically driven phonons -- is described by the formalism. Finally, we discuss examples of scenarios that are not driven by lattice dynamics and interpret the excitation of Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya-type electromagnons and the inverse Faraday effect from the viewpoint of dynamical multiferroicity.