Publication details

X-Ray Magnetic Circular Dichroism in Altermagnetic 𝛼-MnTe

Authors	HARIKI A. DAL DIN A. AMIN O.?J. YAMAGUCHI T. BADURA A. KRIEGNER D. EDMONDS K.?W. CAMPION R.?P. WADLEY P. BACKES D. VEIGA L.?S.?I. DHESI S.?S. SPRINGHOLZ G. ŠMEJKAL L. VÝBORNÝ K. JUNGWIRTH T. KUNEŠ Jan
Year of publication	2024
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Physical Review Letters
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Science
Citation
Web	https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.176701
Doi	http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.176701
Keywords	Spin-orbit coupling; Antiferromagnets; Dynamical mean field theory; X-ray magnetic circular dichroism
Description	Altermagnetism is a recently identified magnetic symmetry class combining characteristics of conventional collinear ferromagnets and antiferromagnets, that were regarded as mutually exclusive, and enabling phenomena and functionalities unparalleled in either of the two traditional elementary magnetic classes. In this work we use symmetry, ab initio theory, and experiments to explore x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) in the altermagnetic class. As a representative material for our XMCD study we choose ??-MnTe with compensated antiparallel magnetic order in which an anomalous Hall effect has been already demonstrated. We predict and experimentally confirm a characteristic XMCD line shape for compensated moments lying in a plane perpendicular to the light propagation vector. Our results highlight the distinct phenomenology in altermagnets of this time-reversal symmetry breaking response, and its potential utility for element-specific spectroscopy and microscopy.