Supercell altermagnets
Rodrigo Jaeschke‐Ubiergo, V. Bharadwaj, T. Jungwirth, Libor Šmejkal, Jairo Sinova
Abstract
Altermagnets are compensated magnets with unconventional $d$-, $g$-, and $i$-wave spin order in reciprocal space. So far the search for new altermagnetic candidates has been focused on materials in which the magnetic unit cell is identical to the nonmagnetic one, i.e., magnetic structures with zero propagation vector. Here, we substantially broaden the family of altermagnetic candidates by predicting supercell altermagnets. Their magnetic unit cell is constructed by enlarging the nonmagnetic primitive unit cell, resulting in a nonzero propagation vector for the magnetic structure. This connection of the magnetic configuration to the ordering of sublattices gives an extra degree of freedom to supercell altermagnets, which can allow for the control over the order parameter spatial orientation. We identify realistic candidates ${\mathrm{MnSe}}_{2}$ with a $d$-wave order, and ${\mathrm{RbCoBr}}_{3}, {\mathrm{CsCoCr}}_{3}$, and ${\mathrm{BaMnO}}_{3}$ with $g$-wave order. We demonstrate the reorientation of the order parameter in ${\mathrm{MnSe}}_{2}$, which has two different magnetic configurations, whose energy difference is only 5 meV, opening the possibility of controlling the orientation of the altermagnetic order parameter by external perturbations.