Antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator state in Sr3Ir2O7

D. G. Mazzone (), Y. Shen, H. Suwa, G. Fabbris, J. Yang, S.-S. Zhang, H. Miao, J. Sears, Ke Jia, Y. G. Shi, M. H. Upton, D. M. Casa, X. Liu (), Jian Liu, C. D. Batista and M. P. M. Dean ()
Additional contact information
D. G. Mazzone: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Y. Shen: Brookhaven National Laboratory
H. Suwa: The University of Tokyo
G. Fabbris: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory
J. Yang: University of Tennessee
S.-S. Zhang: University of Tennessee
H. Miao: Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
J. Sears: Brookhaven National Laboratory
Ke Jia: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Y. G. Shi: Chinese Academy of Sciences
M. H. Upton: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory
D. M. Casa: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory
X. Liu: ShanghaiTech University
Jian Liu: University of Tennessee
C. D. Batista: University of Tennessee
M. P. M. Dean: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2022, vol. 13, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract Excitonic insulators are usually considered to form via the condensation of a soft charge mode of bound electron-hole pairs. This, however, presumes that the soft exciton is of spin-singlet character. Early theoretical considerations have also predicted a very distinct scenario, in which the condensation of magnetic excitons results in an antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator state. Here we report resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements of Sr3Ir2O7. By isolating the longitudinal component of the spectra, we identify a magnetic mode that is well-defined at the magnetic and structural Brillouin zone centers, but which merges with the electronic continuum in between these high symmetry points and which decays upon heating concurrent with a decrease in the material’s resistivity. We show that a bilayer Hubbard model, in which electron-hole pairs are bound by exchange interactions, consistently explains all the electronic and magnetic properties of Sr3Ir2O7 indicating that this material is a realization of the long-predicted antiferromagnetic excitonic insulator phase.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-28207-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:13:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-022-28207-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28207-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().