This article is cited in 18 papers

Magnetism

Spatially modulated antiferromagnetic structures in an easy-plane multiferroic

N. E. Kulagin^a, A. F. Popkov^b, A. K. Zvezdin<sup>c

a</sup> State University of Management, Moscow
^b National Research University of Electronic Technology
^c Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

Abstract: Possible types of spatially modulated periodic antiferromagnetic structures in a uniaxial rhombohedral multiferroic with BiFeO$_3$ crystal symmetry have been studied depending on the ratio of the uniaxial anisotropy and magnetoelectric interaction parameters. It has been shown that, along with symmetric cycloid antiferromagnetic structures with zero transverse component of the antiferromagnetism vector, there are changes in the antiferromagnetism vector direction with both right and left nonzero components of the antiferromagnetic moment, which are branched from the high-symmetry spatially modulated distribution. These solutions degenerate into a homogeneous state at a critical value of the normalized easy-plane anisotropy parameter. The existence of the found spatially inhomogeneous antiferromagnetic states with an incommensurate period can lead to additional features in magnetoelectric properties in multiferroics of the type under consideration near magnetic phase transitions in electric and magnetic fields.

Received: 29.09.2010

 English version: Physics of the Solid State, 2011, 53:5, 970–977

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