Electric field control of electromagnon frequency in multiferroics

S. Omid Sayedaghaee, Charles Paillard, Sergey Prosandeev, Sergei Prokhorenko, Yousra Nahas, Bin Xu, and L. Bellaiche

Phys. Rev. Materials 6, 124404 – Published 6 December 2022

Abstract

Electromagnons, which are coupled polar and magnetic excitations in magnetoelectric materials, are of large interest for electronic and computing technological devices. Using molecular dynamics simulations based on an ab initio effective Hamiltonian, we predict that the frequency of several electromagnons can be tuned by the application of electric fields in the model multiferroic ${BiFeO}_{3}$ , with this frequency either increasing or decreasing depending on the selected electromagnon. In particular, we show that the frequency of electromagnons localized at ferroelectric domain walls can be tuned over a 200 GHz range by realistic dc electric fields. We interpret the realized frequency increase (decrease) by local hardening (softening) of the associated polar phonons which couples to the applied electric field. The increase versus decrease in the electromagnon frequency is further found to be correlated with the real-space localization of such phonons.

Received 14 August 2022
Accepted 1 November 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevMaterials.6.124404

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Ferroelectric domains Magneto-dielectric effect

First-principles calculations

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

S. Omid Sayedaghaee ¹, Charles Paillard ², Sergey Prosandeev¹, Sergei Prokhorenko¹, Yousra Nahas¹, Bin Xu ³, and L. Bellaiche¹

¹Physics Department and Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA
²Université Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec, CNRS, Laboratoire SPMS, 91190 Gif-sur-Yvette, France
³Institute of Theoretical and Applied Physics, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Thin Films, School of Physical Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, China