2026/08/06 by Christopher J. Butler, Katsuki Nihongi, Haruto Yoshimochi +4
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.mes-hall
10 pages, 6 figures (plus 12 pages, 9 figures)
arxiv created 2026/08/06 · arxiv updated 2026/08/07
The mechanisms stabilizing non-collinear magnetism in centrosymmetric crystals remain unclear, but likely involve spin-spin interactions mediated by itinerant electrons, such as the RKKY interaction. Finite-Q magnetic order may then be accompanied by electronic modulations that are observable using a scanning tunneling microscope. In five successive magnetic phases of GdRu2Ge2, including two nano-scale skyrmion crystal phases, we show that multi-Q magnetism among Gd 4f spins entails a corresponding multi-Q texture among the Ru 4d orbitals that contribute itinerant electron bands. With atomically-resolved images of each electronic texture's motif, and a simple numerical modeling scheme drawing on the underlying spin structures, we infer their key relationship: The alignment between nearest-neighbor Gd spins tightly correlates with the local density-of-states of the Ru 4d orbitals on the two bond-centered sublattices of the Gd square net. These analyses offer a microscopic view of the atomic-scale intertwining of charge and spin degrees-of-freedom in non-collinear itinerant magnets.