Regular Article

Anisotropic superexchange through nonmagnetic anions with spin-orbit coupling

¹ College of Physics and Information Technology, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an 710119, P.R. China
² School of Physical Science and Technology&Key Laboratory for Magnetism and Magnetic Materials of the MoE, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, P.R. China
³ Center for High-Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research, Beijing 100094, P.R. China

^a e-mail: jun.chang@hotmail.com

Received: 18 March 2020
Received in final form: 16 June 2020
Published online: 24 August 2020

Abstract

Anisotropic superexchange interaction is one of the most important interactions in realizing exotic quantum magnetism, which is traditionally regarded to originate from magnetic ions and has no relation with the nonmagnetic ions. In our work, by studying a multi-orbital Hubbard model with spin-orbit coupling on both magnetic cations and nonmagnetic anions, we analytically demonstrate that the spin-orbit coupling on nonmagnetic anions alone can induce antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, symmetric anisotropic exchange and single ion anisotropy on the magnetic ions and thus it actually contributes to anisotropic superexchange on an equal footing as that of magnetic ions. Our results promise one more route to realize versatile exotic phases in condensed matter systems, long-range orders in low dimensional materials and switchable single molecule magnetic devices for recording and manipulating quantum information through nonmagnetic anions.