Altermagnetism in MnTe: origin, predicted manifestations, and routes to detwinning

Abstract

MnTe has recently attracted attention as an altermagnetic candidate. Experimentally it has an altermagnetic order of ferromagnetic $ab$ planes, stacked antiferromagnetically along $c$. We show that this magnetic order (by itself non-trivial, since the in-plane exchange in antiferromagnetic) opens intriguing possibility of manufacturing altermagnetically-detwinned samples and generate observable magnetooptical response (which we calculate from first principles) as a signature of altermagnetism.