Chirality induced anomalous-Hall effect in helical spin crystals

Under pressure, the itinerant helimagnet MnSi displays unusual magnetic properties. We have previously discussed a BCC helical spin crystal as a promising starting point for describing the high pressure phenomenology. This state has topologically nontrivial configurations of the magnetization field. Here we note the consequences for magneto-transport that arise generally from such spin textures. In particular a skyrmion density induced `topological' Hall effect, with unusual field dependence, is described.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of SCES 07 (the international conference on strongly correlated electron systems 2007 in Houston, USA

Theoretical proposal predicting anomalous magnetoresistance and quadratic Hall effect in the partially ordered state of MnSi

In [B. Binz, A. Vishwanath and V. Aji, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 207202 (2006)], a magnetic structure that breaks time reversal symmetry in the absence of net magnetization was proposed as an explanation for the high pressure "partially ordered" state of MnSi. Here we make explicit the anomalous magneto-transport properties of such a state: a magnetoresistivity which is linear and a Hall conductance which is quadratic in the applied magnetic field. Field cooling procedures for obtaining single domain samples are discussed. The anomalous effects are elaborated in the case of three geometries chosen to produce experimentally unambiguous signals of this unusual magnetic state; e.g., it is predicted that a field in z-direction induces an anisotropy in the x-y plane. Another geometry leads to a Hall voltage parallel to the magnetic field.Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures, International Conference on Magnetism 2006 in Kyot

On the irredundant part of the first Piola-Kirchhoff stress tensor

Let us assume a given medium moves and deforms in an ambient smooth and oriented Riemannian manifold N with metric (, ). This medium at hand is supposed to maintain the shape of a compact smooth orientable and connected manifold M with boundary. Clearly dim M ≤ dim N. By a configuration j of the medium we mean a smooth embedding of M into N. The configuration space is E(M, N), the collection of all smooth embeddings of M into N endowed with the C∞-topology. [...] The main purpose of this notes is to exhibit (in absence of exterior force densities) the irredundant part of a(j) that determines the force densities mentioned and the virtual work caused by any infinitesimal distortion at j.[...

The momentum map for nonholonomic field theories with symmetry

In this note, we introduce a suitable generalization of the momentum map for nonholonomic field theories and prove a covariant form of the nonholonomic momentum equation. We show that these covariant objects coincide with their counterparts in mechanics by making the transition to the Cauchy formalism

Metamagnetism of itinerant electrons in multi-layer ruthenates

The problem of quantum criticality in the context of itinerant ferro- or metamagnetism has received considerable attention [S. A. Grigera et. al., Science 294, 329 (2001); C. Pfleiderer et. al., Nature, 414, 427 (2001)]. It has been proposed that a new kind of quantum criticality is realised in materials such as MnSi or Sr_3Ru_2O_7. We show based on a mean-field theory that the low-temperature behaviour of the n-layer ruthenates Sr_{n+1}Ru_nO_{3n+1} can be understood as a result of a Van Hove singularity (VHS). We consider a single band whose Fermi energy, E_F, is close to the VHS and deduce a complex phase diagram for the magnetism as a function of temperature, magnetic field and E_F. The location of E_F with respect to the VHS depends on the number of layers or can be tuned by pressure. We find that the ferromagnetic quantum phase transition in this case is not of second but of first order, with a metamagnetic quantum critical endpoint at high magnetic field. Despite its simplicity this model describes well the properties of the uniform magnetism in the single, double and triple layer ruthenates. We would like to emphasise that the origin of this behaviour lies in the band structure.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, typos corrected and acknowledgement added, to appear in the Europhysics Letter

Wilson's renormalization group applied to 2D lattice electrons in the presence of van Hove singularities

The weak coupling instabilities of a two dimensional Fermi system are investigated for the case of a square lattice using a Wilson renormalization group scheme to one loop order. We focus on a situation where the Fermi surface passes through two saddle points of the single particle dispersion. In the case of perfect nesting, the dominant instability is a spin density wave but d-wave superconductivity as well as charge or spin flux phases are also obtained in certain regions in the space of coupling parameters. The low energy regime in the vicinity of these instabilities can be studied analytically. Although saddle points play a major role (through their large contribution to the single particle density of states), the presence of low energy excitations along the Fermi surface rather than at isolated points is crucial and leads to an asymptotic decoupling of the various instabilities. This suggests a more mean-field like picture of these instabilities, than the one recently established by numerical studies using discretized Fermi surfaces.Comment: gzipped tar file, 31 pages including 10 figures, minor correction of misprint