Richness of spiral magnetic states in strontium ferrite thin films

ORAL

Abstract

Perovskite strontium ferrite, SrFeO3, hosts a variety of spiral magnetic phases at low temperature including multi-q states of different proper screw and/or cycloidal ordering [1]. Among them is a phase believed to support topologically-protected magnetic structures and may explain an observed finite-field anomaly in Hall effect [2].

SrFeO3 is a fascinating material because these effects manifest despite the centrosymmetry of the crystal structure. Instead of a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the helimagnetism has been suggested to arise due to an interplay of electronic interactions [3].

Using resonant soft x-ray scattering, we study these complex magnetic orderings at low temperature on epitaxial thin films of SrFeO3 grown by pulsed laser deposition. We find that the character of the spiral ordering depends on the substrate selected for growth, possibly indicating the influence of biaxial strain on the electronic interactions.



References

[1] Ishiwata, S. et al. Versatile helimagnetic phases under magnetic fields in cubic perovskite SrFeO3, Phys. Rev. B 84, 1–5 (2011).

[2] Ishiwata, S. et al. Emergent topological spin structures in the centrosymmetric cubic perovskite SrFeO3, Phys. Rev. B 101, 134406 (2020).

[3] Mostovoy, M. Helicoidal ordering in iron perovskites, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 137205 (2005).

* US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, under contract number DE-AC02-76SF00515.Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Emergent Phenomena in Quantum Systems Initiative through grant number GBMF9072.

Presenters

  • Jennifer Fowlie

    Stanford University

Authors

  • Jennifer Fowlie

    Stanford University

  • Jiarui Li

    Stanford University, SLAC - Natl Accelerator Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology MI, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • Woojin Kim

    Stanford University

  • Ronny Sutarto

    Canadian Light Source, Canadian Lightsource

  • Teak Boyko

    Canadian Lightsource

  • Harold Hwang

    Stanford University