Dynamical criticality of spin-shear coupling in van der Waals antiferromagnets

Faran Zhou, Kyle Hwangbo, Qi Zhang, Chong Wang, Lingnan Shen, Jiawei Zhang, Qianni Jiang, Alfred Zong, Yifan Su, Marc Zajac, Youngjun Ahn, Donald A. Walko, Richard D. Schaller, Jiun Haw Chu, Nuh Gedik, Xiaodong Xu, Di Xiao, Haidan Wen*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

The interplay between a multitude of electronic, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom underlies the complex phase diagrams of quantum materials. Layer stacking in van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures is responsible for exotic electronic and magnetic properties, which inspires stacking control of two-dimensional magnetism. Beyond the interplay between stacking order and interlayer magnetism, we discover a spin-shear coupling mechanism in which a subtle shear of the atomic layers can have a profound effect on the intralayer magnetic order in a family of vdW antiferromagnets. Using time-resolved X-ray diffraction and optical linear dichroism measurements, interlayer shear is identified as the primary structural degree of freedom that couples with magnetic order. The recovery times of both shear and magnetic order upon optical excitation diverge at the magnetic ordering temperature with the same critical exponent. The time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory shows that this concurrent critical slowing down arises from a linear coupling of the interlayer shear to the magnetic order, which is dictated by the broken mirror symmetry intrinsic to the monoclinic stacking. Our results highlight the importance of interlayer shear in ultrafast control of magnetic order via spin-mechanical coupling.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number6598
JournalNature communications
Volume13
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022

Funding

We thank Dr. John W. Freeland for discussion. This work was primarily supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, under Award No.DE-SC0012509 (Experimental design, data collection and analysis, theory, and partial manuscript preparation by F.Z., K.H., Q.Z., C.W., L.S., A.Z., Y.S., N.G., X.X., D.X., and H.W.). The use of facilities at the Center for Nanoscale Materials (R.D.) and Advanced Photon Source (D.W. and M.Z.), both U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facilities, was supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Bulk crystal growth (Q.J.) is supported by grant no. NSF MRSEC DMR-1719797 and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s EPiQS Initiative, grant no. GBMF6759 to J.H.C. A.Z. acknowledges support from the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science. Y.A. acknowledges the support from the non-academic research internship program for graduate students through grant no. DMR-1609545 by the U.S. National Science Foundation. H.W., J.W., and Y.A. acknowledge the partial support for data collection and manuscript preparation by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division.

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Physics and Astronomy

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