Orbital magnetoelectric coupling at finite electric field

Orbital magnetoelectric coupling at finite electric field

We extend the band theory of linear orbital magnetoelectric coupling to treat crystals under finite electric fields. Previous work established that the orbital magnetoelectric response of a generic insulator at zero field comprises three contributions that were denoted as local circulation, itinerant circulation, and Chern-Simons. We find that the expression for each of them is modified by the ...

Orbital magnetoelectric coupling in band insulators

Magnetoelectric responses are a fundamental characteristic of materials that break time-reversal and inversion symmetries notably multiferroics and, remarkably, of “topological insulators” in which those symmetries are unbroken. Previous work has shown how to compute spin and lattice contributions to the magnetoelectric tensor. Here we solve the problem of orbital contributions by computing the...

Magnetoelectric coupling at metal surfaces.

Magnetoelectric coupling allows the magnetic state of a material to be changed by an applied electric field. To date, this phenomenon has mainly been observed in insulating materials such as complex multiferroic oxides. Bulk metallic systems do not exhibit magnetoelectric coupling, because applied electric fields are screened by conduction electrons. We demonstrate strong magnetoelectric coupli...

Chern-Simons orbital magnetoelectric coupling in generic insulators

Sinisa Coh,1,* David Vanderbilt,1 Andrei Malashevich,2 and Ivo Souza3 1Department of Physics Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8019, USA 2Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA 3Centro de Fı́sica de Materiales and DIPC, Universidad del Paı́s Vasco, 20018 San Sebastián, Spain and Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, E-48011 ...

Magnetoelectric coupling at the EuO/BaTiO3 interface