Igor Mazin (George Mason University)

Date: Thu. October 23rd, 2025, 4:00 pm-5:00 pm
Location: Rockefeller 301

Altermagnetism in 3- and 2-D: simple symmetry constraints and functionalization

Igor Mazin

Department of Physics and Astronomy,  George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

Abstract: Since many years, the canonical classification of ordered magnets included noncollinear (with many further subdivisions) and two collinear types: antiferromagnets (AF), which have net magnetization zero by symmetry, and ferro/ferrimagnets (FM), which do not have this property. The two have distinctly different micro- and macroscopic properties. It was supposed, for instance, that only FM can exhibit spin-splitting of the electronic bands in absence of spin-orbit coupling AND lack of inversion symmetry, have anomalous Hall effect (i.e., Hall effect driven by variation of the Berry phase), magnetooptical effects, suppressed Andreev scattering in contact with a singlet superconductor etc. A surprisingly recent development (~2019) is that this classification is incomplete: there are collinear magnets that would belong to AF by this classification, but show all characteristics of FM, except the net spin polarization! They were recently dubbed “altermagnets” (AM). Incidentally, what has also not been fully appreciated was that there are also materials that have strictly zero net magnetization, but enforced not by symmetry, but by the Luttinger’s theorem, and therefore truly belonging to the FM class (“Luttinger-compensated ferrimagnets”). In this talk, I will present the new classification and explain, in specific examples, what are the symmetry conditions for AM, why these are a truly new class deserving a new name, and how their unusual properties appear. In the second part of the talk I will discuss single-layer non-AM antiferromagnets, and show how the can be functionalized to be AM by targeted symmetry lowering, with specific examples of MnP(S,Se) 3 and FeSe, and will discuss novel properties compared to 3D AM.

References:
[1] A Punch line: altermagnetism. Igor Mazin and The PRX Editors. Phys. Rev. X 12, 040002 (2022)
[2] Induced Monolayer Altermagnetism in MnP(S,Se)3 and FeSe. I.I. Mazin, R. González-Hernández, L.
Šmejkal, arXiv:2309.02355
[3] A. Smolyanyuk, L. Šmejkal and I. I. Mazin, A tool to check whether a compensated collinear magnetic
material is antiferro- or altermagnetic. https://github.com/amchecker/amcheck and arXiv:2401.08784

Host: Shulei Zhang