Systematic display of the spin splitting in band structures of representative altermagnetic crystals

Abstract

In this work we demonstrate a novel approach to exhibit the unique spin splitting that is typical of collinear altermagnets. This approach is to plot band structures on Brillouin zone paths that sample general k-points to show a representative picture that corresponds to Brillouin zone averages. This is in contrast to conventional band structure plotting which plots band structures on the highest-symmetry points and lines, and thus in many cases can fail to show any altermagnetic spin splitting at all. Our investigation compares the new approach with the band structures of collinear altermagnets using conventional band structure plotting. We report the band structure and symmetry analysis for MnTe, CrSb, SmFeO3, ScCrO3, LaMnO3, TlCrO3, HoFeO3, InCrO3 and DyFeO3. This result clearly demonstrates the advantage of this novel method for displaying the spin splitting of collinear altermagnets.