Algorithm for spin symmetry operation search
Kohei Shinohara, Atsushi Togo, Hikaru Watanabe, Takuya Nomoto, Isao Tanaka, Ryotaro Arita
Abstract
A spin space group provides a suitable way of fully exploiting the symmetry of a spin arrangement with a negligible spin-orbit coupling. There has been a growing interest in applying spin symmetry analysis with the spin space group in the field of magnetism. However, there is no established algorithm to search for spin symmetry operations of the spin space group. This paper presents an exhaustive algorithm for determining the spin symmetry operations of commensurate spin arrangements. The present algorithm searches for spin symmetry operations from the symmetry operations of a corresponding nonmagnetic crystal structure and determines their spin-rotation parts by solving a Procrustes problem. An implementation is distributed under a permissive free software license in spinspg Version 0.1.1, available at https://github.com/spglib/spinspg.