Magnetoelectric coupling of domains, domain walls and vortices in a multiferroic with independent magnetic and electric order.

ABSTRACT: Magnetically induced ferroelectrics exhibit rigidly coupled magnetic and electric order. The ordering temperatures and spontaneous polarization of these multiferroics are notoriously low, however. Both properties can be much larger if magnetic and ferroelectric order occur independently, but the cost of this independence is that pronounced magnetoelectric interaction is no longer obvious. Using spatially resolved images of domains and density-functional theory, we show that in multiferroics with separately emerging magnetic and ferroelectric order, the microscopic magnetoelectric coupling can be intrinsically strong even though the macroscopic leading-order magnetoelectric effect is forbidden by symmetry. We show, taking hexagonal ErMnO₃ as an example, that a strong bulk couplin

SUBMITTER: Giraldo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8149668 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature