Anisotropic magnetic couplings and structure-driven canted to collinear transitions in Sr2IrO4 by magnetically constrained noncollinear DFT

Author(s)
Peitao Liu, Sergii Khmelevskyi, Bongjae Kim, Martijn Marsman, Dianzhong Li, Xing-Qiu Chen, D. D. Sarma, Georg Kresse, Cesare Franchini
Abstract

We study the canted magnetic state in Sr2IrO4 using fully relativistic density functional theory (DFT) including an on-site Hubbard U correction. A complete magnetic phase diagram with respect to the tetragonal distortion and the rotation of IrO6 octahedra is constructed, revealing the presence of two types of canted to collinear magnetic transitions: a spin-flop transition with increasing tetragonal distortion and a complete quenching of the basal weak ferromagnetic moment below a critical octahedral rotation. Moreover, we put forward a scheme to study the anisotropic magnetic couplings by mapping magnetically constrained noncollinear DFT onto a general spin Hamiltonian. This procedure allows for the simultaneous account and direct control of the lattice, spin, and orbital interactions within a fully ab initio scheme. We compute the isotropic, single site anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) coupling parameters, and clarify that the origin of the canted magnetic state in Sr2IrO4 arises from the structural distortions and the competition between isotropic exchange and DM interactions.

Organisation(s)
Computational Materials Physics
External organisation(s)
Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Indian Institute of Science, Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Journal
Physical Review B
Volume
92
No. of pages
6
ISSN
1098-0121
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.054428
Publication date
08-2015
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103025 Quantum mechanics, 103036 Theoretical physics, 103015 Condensed matter, 103009 Solid state physics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Condensed Matter Physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/9b1ad3ae-b5de-49d0-835b-58cb80d8199a