Charge ordering and spontaneous topological Hall effect in bilayer skyrmion crystals

Autor: Hardy, Andrew, Bose, Anjishnu, Grover, Tanmay, Paramekanti, Arun
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Druh dokumentu: Working Paper
Popis: Magnetic skyrmion crystals with zero net skyrmion charge and zero topological Hall response are interesting candidate phases which can occur at a vanishing magnetic field in centrosymmetric systems. We study a minimal bilayer model of skyrmion crystals having opposite chirality and topological charge in the two layers, and show that it can host nearly flat electronic bands with quasi-uniform Berry curvature and quantum metric. Using Hartree-Fock theory, we show that weak to moderate short-range electron interactions induce two distinct types of symmetry breaking patterns depending on the band dispersion: an intra-unit-cell charge density modulation from Chern band mixing or a layer-imbalanced phase with a nonzero ferroelectric polarization. Both phases break inversion symmetry leading to a spontaneous and large net topological Hall effect, with the phase diagram tunable by external electric fields. Our results may be relevant to centrosymmetric skyrmion materials such as Gd$_2$PdSi$_3$ and Gd$_3$Ru$_4$Al$_{12}$ as well as artificially engineered heterostructures. We also discuss its relation to recent work on twisted transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers.
Databáze: arXiv