Curvilinear One-Dimensional Antiferromagnets

Nano Lett. 2020 Nov 11;20(11):8157-8162. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c03246. Epub 2020 Oct 20.

Abstract

Antiferromagnets host exotic quasiparticles, support high frequency excitations and are key enablers of the prospective spintronic and spin-orbitronic technologies. Here, we propose a concept of a curvilinear antiferromagnetism where material responses can be tailored by a geometrical curvature without the need to adjust material parameters. We show that an intrinsically achiral one-dimensional (1D) curvilinear antiferromagnet behaves as a chiral helimagnet with geometrically tunable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) and orientation of the Néel vector. The curvature-induced DMI results in the hybridization of spin wave modes and enables a geometrically driven local minimum of the low-frequency branch. This positions curvilinear 1D antiferromagnets as a novel platform for the realization of geometrically tunable chiral antiferromagnets for antiferromagnetic spin-orbitronics and fundamental discoveries in the formation of coherent magnon condensates in the momentum space.

Keywords: Dzyaloshinskii−Moriya interaction; antiferromagnetism; coherent magnon excitations; curvilinear spin chain; spin−orbitronics.