Vilmos Kocsis, Karlo Penc, Toomas Rõõm, Urmas Nagel, Jakub Vít, Judit Romhányi, Yusuke Tokunaga, Yasujiro Taguchi, Yoshinori Tokura, István Kézsmárki, Sándor Bordács
- The ultimate goal of multiferroic research is the development of a new-generation nonvolatile memory devices, where magnetic bits are controlled via electric fields with low energy consumption. Here, we demonstrate the optical identification of magnetoelectric (ME) antiferromagnetic (AFM) domains in the LiCoPO4 exploiting the strong absorption difference between the domains. This unusual contrast, also present in zero magnetic field, is attributed to the dynamic ME effect of the spin-wave excitations, as confirmed by our microscopic model, which also captures the characteristics of the observed static ME effect. The control and the optical readout of AFM/ME domains, demonstrated here, will likely promote the development of ME and spintronic devices based on AFM insulators.
