Effective low-energy RKKY interaction in doped topological crystalline insulators

Abstract

We study the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction between two magnetic impurities resided on the (001) plane of topological crystalline insulator (TCI) SnTe associated with four anisotropic Dirac cones protected by the mirror symmetry. The lattice Green's functions governing the correlation of both the sublattices and spins are deduced by developing a two-band effective model. We explore the RKKY Heisenberg interaction of the system established by the interference between four Dirac cones. Our key finding is that, independent of the position of magnetic impurities on the same sublattices or different ones, multiple wave vectors with different orders describe the RKKY coupling physics in TCIs. Further, both the undoped and doped spin susceptibility give rise to the same decay rates like graphene. Magnetic impurities on the same and different sublattices propose the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic base phase of the undoped system, respectively. Here we demonstrate that RKKY exchange in TCIs, undergoes a ferromagnetic-to-antiferromagnetic transition and vice versa in response to switching on/off the electron and hole doping. Analytic expressions of doped TCIs are obtained to draw the magnetic phase diagram of the distance between two magnetic impurities and the doping concentration, clarifying the contributions of short and long distances as well as low and high concentrations to the RKKY coupling. Our results may tailor the magnetic features of TCIs for further research and application.