Effective bilinear-biquadratic model for noncoplanar ordering in itinerant magnets

Abstract

Noncollinear and noncoplanar magnetic textures including skyrmions and vortices act as emergent electromagnetic fields and give rise to novel electronic and transport properties. We here report a unified understanding of noncoplanar magnetic orderings emergent from the spin-charge coupling in itinerant magnets. The mechanism has its roots in effective multiple spin interactions beyond the conventional Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) mechanism, which are ubiquitously generated in itinerant electron systems with local magnetic moments. Carefully examining the higher-order perturbations in terms of the spin-charge coupling, we construct a minimal effective spin model composed of the bilinear and biquadratic interactions with particular wave numbers dictated by the Fermi surface. We find that our effective model captures the underlying physics of the instability toward noncoplanar multiple-$Q$ states discovered recently in itinerant magnets: a single-$Q$ helical state expected from the RKKY theory is replaced by a double-$Q$ vortex crystal with chirality density waves even for an infinitely small spin-charge coupling on generic lattices [R. Ozawa $\mathit{et \ al.}$, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. $\mathbf{85}$, 103703 (2016)], and a triple-$Q$ skyrmion crystal with a high topological number of two appears with increasing the spin-charge coupling on a triangular lattice [R. Ozawa, S. Hayami, and Y. Motome, to appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (arXiv: 1703.03227)]. We find that, by introducing an external magnetic field, our effective model exhibits a plethora of multiple-$Q$ states. Our findings will serve as a guide for exploring further exotic magnetic orderings in itinerant magnets.