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arXiv:2402.19433 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Magnon spectrum of altermagnets beyond linear spin wave theory: Magnon-magnon interactions via time-dependent matrix product states versus atomistic spin dynamics

Federico Garcia-Gaitan, Ali Kefayati, John Q. Xiao, Branislav K. Nikolić

Published Jan 15, 2025• 19 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Altermagnets, a newly classified type of collinear magnet, exhibit zero magnetization, akin to antiferromagnets, but have spin-split electronic bands, akin to ferromagnets. Their low-energy excitations are predicted to be magnons, but with linear energy-momentum dispersion, typical of antiferromagnets, and additional chiral splitting analogous to those of electronic bands. However, such predictions are made using linear spin wave theory, which considers infinitely long-lived noninteracting magnons. This study employs nonperturbative quantum many-body calculations, via tensor network algorithms, to find how a chiral magnon will acquire finite lifetime and how the bands will shift due to magnon-magnon interaction. Such corrections to noninteracting magnon bands could be detected by Raman scattering experiments, for which the recipe is provided. Although the same interaction effects are often described in magnetism by nonlinearity of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, direct comparison using altermagnetic magnons as the testbed, shows how such classical methods cannot fully reproduce the results of quantum many-body calculations.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.111.l020407

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Altermagnets, a newly classified type of collinear magnet, exhibit zero magnetization, akin to antiferromagnets, but have spin-split electronic bands, akin to ferromagnets. Their low-energy excitations are predicted to be magnons, but with linear energy-momentum dispersion, typical of antiferromagnets, and additional chiral splitting analogous to those of electronic bands. However, such predictions are made using linear spin wave theory, which considers infinitely long-lived noninteracting magnons. This study employs nonperturbative quantum many-body calculations, via tensor network algorithms, to find how a chiral magnon will acquire finite lifetime and how the bands will shift due to magnon-magnon interaction. Such corrections to noninteracting magnon bands could be detected by Raman scattering experiments, for which the recipe is provided. Although the same interaction effects are often described in magnetism by nonlinearity of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, direct comparison using altermagnetic magnons as the testbed, shows how such classical methods cannot fully reproduce the results of quantum many-body calculations.
Quantum dynamics in a spin-1/2 square lattice J1J_{1}J1​-J2J_{2}J2​-δδδ altermagnet
A key feature of the newly discovered altermagnet is that its spin degeneracy is lifted, although it has an antiferromagnetic order and zero net magnetization. In this work, we investigate a frustrated spin-1/2 J1J_1J1​-J2J_2J2​-δδδ Heisenberg model on the square lattice by the tensor network methodin combination with the linear spin-wave theory, with our focus on both the magnon excitations and longitudinal excitations.For a small J2J_2J2​ and a finite range of δδδ we demonstrate that such a model hosts an altermagnetic ground state. Its magnon spectrum is split into two branches and the largest splitting occurs at (±π/2,±π/2)\left(\pmπ/2, \pmπ/2\right)(±π/2,±π/2) in the Brillouin zone. The magnitudes of splitting in the two magnon modes are equal with respect to the case of δ=0δ=0δ=0. Dynamical spin structure factors show that the low-energy peak in the longitudinal spectral weight around (π/2,π/2)(π/2, π/2)(π/2,π/2) is also split, and thus the relative positions of the magnon modes and longitudinal modes in energy may change in the presence of a finite δδδ. These findings demonstrate that the altermagnets harbor more complex quantum dynamics than the conventional collinear antiferromagnets.
Altermagnetism has recently emerged as a distinct collinear magnetic phase exhibiting momentum-dependent spin-splitting despite vanishing net magnetization, as a consequence of inequivalent non-magnetic environments. Lately, it has been proposed that strong electronic correlations may yield spontaneous altermagnetism due to orbital ordering even for equivalent non-magnetic environments. While previous studies have largely focused on the electronic structure, a unified understanding of the collective excitations associated with these two different microscopic mechanisms stabilizing altermagnetism remains absent. Here, we develop an extended Kugel'-Khomskiĭ spin-orbital model on a decorated square lattice that simultaneously incorporates inequivalent non-magnetic environments and correlation-driven orbital ordering within a common theoretical framework. Employing a self-consistent mean-field spin-wave orbital-wave formalism, we demonstrate the emergence of mutually unhybridized but interdependent magnon and orbiton excitations exhibiting characteristic chiral-splitting. We show that the splitting originates from two distinct microscopic contributions: a lattice-dependent term arising from inequivalent non-magnetic environments and an orbital-order-induced exchange-anisotropy term that survives even for equivalent non-magnetic environments. The proposed framework therefore unifies the collective excitations associated with both types of altermagnetism. We further investigate the finite-temperature evolution of the coupled spin-orbital system, revealing the breakdown of spin-wave and orbital-wave approximations through spurious 1st-order transitions, while complementary classical Monte Carlo simulations recover the expected continuous 2nd-order behaviour. Our work establishes a unified microscopic framework for understanding collective magnon and orbiton excitations in altermagnets.
The usual starting point for understanding magnons in cuprate antiferromagnets such as La 2 CuO 4 is a spin model incorporating cyclic exchange, which descends from a one-band Hubbard model, and has parameters taken from fits based on non-interacting spin wave theory. Here we explore whether this provides a reliable description of experiment, using matrix product states (MPS) to calculate magnon spectra beyond spin wave theory. We find that analysis based on low orders of spin wave theory leads to systematic overestimates of exchange parameters, with corresponding errors in estimates of Hubbard t / U . Once these are corrected, the “standard” model provides a good account of magnon dispersion and lineshape in La 2 CuO 4 , but fails to fully capture the continuum observed at high energies. The extension of this analysis to CaCuO 2 and Sr 2 IrO 4 is also discussed.
We investigate quantum effects on magnon excitations in a minimal spin-1/2 Heisenberg model for 2D altermagnets on the square lattice. A continuous similarity transformation is applied in momentum space to derive an effective Hamiltonian that conserves the number of magnon excitations. This allows us to quantitatively calculate the one-magnon dispersion, the effects of magnon-magnon interactions, and the dynamic structure factor in a certain range of parameters. In particular, we focus on the altermagnetic spin splitting of the magnon bands and the size of the roton minimum. We further map out divergencies of the continuous similarity transformation for different types of generators, which signal either the breakdown of the Néel-ordered phase or the presence of significant magnon decay.
Recent years have seen a proliferation in investigations on Altermagnetism due to its exciting prospects both from an applications perspective and theoretical standpoint. Traditionally, altermagnets are distinguished from collinear antiferromagnets using the central concept of halving subgroups within the spin space group formalism. In this work, we propose the Fundamental Lemma of Altermagnetism (FLAM) deriving the exact conditions required for the existence of altermagnetic phase in a magnetic material on the basis of site-symmetry groups and halving subgroups for a given crystallographic space group. The spin group formalism further clubs ferrimagnetism with ferromagnetism since the same-spin and opposite-spin sublattices lose their meaning in the presence of multiple magnetic species. As a consequence of FLAM, we further propose a class of fully compensated ferrimagnets, termed as Alterferrimagnets (AFiMs), which can show alternating momentum-dependent spin-polarized non-relativistic electronic bands within the first Brillouin zone. We show that alterferrimagnetism is a generalization of traditional collinear altermagnetism where multiple magnetic species are allowed to coexist forming fully compensated magnetic-sublattices, each with individual up-spin and down-spin sublattices.
The behavior of spin quantum in k-space is key to identifying altermagnets (AMs) as the third kind of fundamental collinear magnetism. In contrast, non-collinear magnets,though abundant in nature,lack well-defined spin quantum numbers, and the resulting spin textures are often highly complex, which limits their potential for next-generation spintronic applications. Here we propose hyperspin, which lives in a higher-dimensional space, to address these drawbacks. Through analyzing the commutation relations between spin and Hamiltonian for a class of non-collinear magnets, we reveal it is a hyperspin, rather than the usual spin, that commutes with Hamiltonian. Unexpectedly, these non-collinear magnets should also show collinear spin-split bands in k-space like collinear AMs. We therefore classify such non-collinear magnets as hyperspin altermagnets (HAMs), as opposed to the usual collinear AMs. Our theory elucidates the fundamental physics of AMs and HAMs and provides a framework for exploring the wide range of non-collinear magnets that may possess other kinds of conserved quantities.