Spin-orbital driven ferroelectricity

Abstract

We study the effect of octahedron rotation on the electric polarization with spin–orbit coupling. Employing local coordinates to represent the tilting of the ligands' octahedra, we evaluate the electric polarization in a chain of transition metal ions with non-polar octahedron rotation. We find the orbital ordering produced by the ligands' rotation and the spin order, together, determine the polarization features, manifesting that non-vanishing polarization appears in collinear spin order and the direction of polarization is no more restricted in the plane of spin rotation in cycloidal ordering.