Extraordinary phase transition revealed in a van der Waals antiferromagnet

Xiaoyu Guo, Wenhao Liu, Jonathan Schwartz, Suk Hyun Sung, Dechen Zhang, Makoto Shimizu, Aswin L. N. Kondusamy, Lu Li, Kai Sun, Hui Deng, Harald O. Jeschke, Igor I. Mazin, Robert Hovden, Bing Lv () and Liuyan Zhao ()
Additional contact information
Xiaoyu Guo: University of Michigan
Wenhao Liu: the University of Texas at Dallas
Jonathan Schwartz: University of Michigan
Suk Hyun Sung: University of Michigan
Dechen Zhang: University of Michigan
Makoto Shimizu: Okayama University
Aswin L. N. Kondusamy: the University of Texas at Dallas
Lu Li: University of Michigan
Kai Sun: University of Michigan
Hui Deng: University of Michigan
Harald O. Jeschke: Okayama University
Igor I. Mazin: George Mason University
Robert Hovden: University of Michigan
Bing Lv: the University of Texas at Dallas
Liuyan Zhao: University of Michigan

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract While the surface-bulk correspondence has been ubiquitously shown in topological phases, the relationship between surface and bulk in Landau-like phases is much less explored. Theoretical investigations since 1970s for semi-infinite systems have predicted the possibility of the surface order emerging at a higher temperature than the bulk, clearly illustrating a counterintuitive situation and greatly enriching phase transitions. But experimental realizations of this prediction remain missing. Here, we demonstrate the higher-temperature surface and lower-temperature bulk phase transitions in CrSBr, a van der Waals (vdW) layered antiferromagnet. We leverage the surface sensitivity of electric dipole second harmonic generation (SHG) to resolve surface magnetism, the bulk nature of electric quadrupole SHG to probe bulk spin correlations, and their interference to capture the two magnetic domain states. Our density functional theory calculations show the suppression of ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic competition at the surface is responsible for this enhanced surface magnetism. Our results not only show counterintuitive, richer phase transitions in vdW magnets, but also provide viable ways to enhance magnetism in their 2D form.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-50900-1 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:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-50900-1

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-50900-1

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 ().