First-Principles Calculation of Spin and Orbital Contributions to Magnetically Ordered Moments in Sr2IrO4
Abstract
We show how an accurate first-principles treatment of the canted-antiferromagnetic ground state of Sr2IrO4, a prototypical 5d correlated spin-orbit coupled material, can be obtained without invoking any free parameters such as the Hubbard U or tuning the spin-orbit coupling strength. Our theoretically predicted iridium magnetic moment of 0.250 μB, canted by 12.6 off the a-axis, is in accord with experimental results. By resolving the magnetic moments into their spin and orbital components, we show that our theoretically obtained variation of the magnetic scattering amplitude <Mm> as a function of the polarization angle is consistent with recent non-resonant magnetic x-ray scattering measurements. The computed value of the band gap (55 meV) is also in line with the corresponding experimental values. A comparison of the band structure to that of the cuprates suggests the presence of incommensurate charge-density wave phases in Sr2IrO4.