Valley-controlled chiral magnetism in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

Abstract

We put forward the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers as a tool to create and control a chiral magnetic texture. We show that in the spin-valley locking regime, the RKKY interaction acts as a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya coupling with an effective spin rotation period exactly equal to the tripled lattice constant. Using mean field theory and classical Monte Carlo simulations, we demonstrate that this interaction qualitatively reshapes the phase diagram of atomically thin antiferromagnets. It destroys the chirality-related phase transition by selecting a single chirality value even when the RKKY interaction is small. At the same time, it shifts the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition associated with spins orientation to higher temperatures. We argue that the valley degree of freedom of electrons mediating the RKKY interaction provides a powerful control knob for exploring non-universal phase transitions and quantum spin liquid states in two-dimensional van der Waals heterostructures.