Tunable dynamical magnetoelectric effect in antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi2_2Te4_4 films

More than forty years ago, axion was postulated as an elementary particle with a low mass and weak interaction in particle physics to solve the strong $\mathcal{CP}$ (charge conjugation and parity) puzzle. Axions are also considered as a possible component of dark matter of the universe. However, the existence of axions in nature has not been confirmed. Interestingly, axions arise as pseudoscalar fields derived from the Chern-Simons theory in condensed matter physics. In antiferromagnetic insulators, the axion field can become dynamical induced by spin-wave excitations and exhibits rich exotic phenomena, such as, the chiral magnetic effect, axionic polariton and so on. However, the study of the dynamical axion field is rare due to the lack of real materials. Recently, MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ was discovered to be an antiferromagnetic topological insulator with a quantized axion field protected by the inversion symmetry $\mathcal{P}$ and the magnetic-crystalline symmetry $\mathcal{S}$. Here, we studied MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ films in which both the $\mathcal{P}$ and $\mathcal{S}$ symmetries are spontaneously broken and found that the dynamical axion field and largely tunable dynamical magnetoelectric effects can be realized through tuning the thickness of MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ films, the temperature and the element substitution. Our results open a broad avenue to study axion dynamics in antiferromagnetic topological insulator MnBi$_2$Te$_4$ and related materials, and also is hopeful to promote the research of dark matter.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

A revised averaging method and general forms of approximate solution for nonlinear oscillator with only polynomial-type displacement nonlinearity

In this paper a revised averaging method is presented, that does not need the detuning factor in the solving procedure. Comparison with the traditional averaging method shows that it has the similar solving procedure and the same result as the primary resonance of the traditional averaging method. Then the nonlinear oscillator with only polynomial-type displacement nonlinearity is studied, and the general forms of the first-order approximate solution by this revised averaging method, and by the traditional averaging method for the super-harmonic resonance and sub-harmonic resonance are established. At last, the Duffing oscillator is investigated as an example, and the comparison of the analytical and numerical results proves the validity and simplicity of the presented method

Two-parameter estimation with three-mode NOON state in a symmetric three-well

We propose a theoretical scheme to realize two-parameter estimation via a Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a symmetric triple-well. The three-mode NOON state is prepared adiabatically as the initial state. Two phase differences between the wells are two parameters to be estimated. With the help of classical and quantum Fisher information, we study the sensitivity of the triple-well on estimating two phase parameters simultaneously. The result shows that the precision of simultaneous estimation of two parameters in a triple-well system can reach the Heisenberg scaling