Switchable chiral antiferromagnetism through nonlinear magnetic susceptibility

Abstract

Antiferromagnets (AFM) have attracted considerable attention in recent years because a number of nontrivial, technologically relevant properties associated with time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking are discovered in many materials. However, time-reversal (TR) partners of AFM states are generally challenging to be selected deterministically except in a few cases with nonzero net magnetization. Recently, it has been shown that the TR partners of the kagome spin ice ground state in HoAgGe with strictly zero net magnetization can be selected through a nonlinear magnetic susceptibility $χ^{(1)}$. In this work, we generalize this scenario to a broad class of chiral AFM with zero net magnetization but field-switchable ground states through $χ^{(1)}$. After a general discussion of $χ^{(1)}$ and its symmetry constraints, we first present a first-principles formalism for calculating it including both mean-field and self-consistent corrections, and then apply the approach to the noncollinear AFM family Mn$_3X$N ($X=$ Ni, Ag, Ga, Zn, Sn) in the $Γ_{5g}$ phase. An intuitive picture of the origin of $χ^{(1)}$ in similar noncollinear AFM is illustrated using 3-sublattice toy model. The model also predicts a nontrivial temperature dependence of $χ^{(1)}$ due to competitions between the longitudinal and transverse single-spin susceptibilities. Our work shows that nonlinear susceptibility can serve as a general protocol for accessing and switching TR partners in fully compensated AFM.