Theory for magnetic impurity modes in two-dimensional van der Waals ferromagnetic films

Abstract

A spin-wave analysis is developed to calculate the energies of the localized excitations occurring in two-dimensional ferromagnetic van der Waals monolayers when a substitutional magnetic impurity is introduced. The magnetic ions lie on a bipartite honeycomb lattice (similar to that for graphene) and the theory includes the effects of both Ising anisotropy and single-ion anisotropy to stabilize the magnetic ordering perpendicular to the atomic plane at low temperatures. A Dyson-equation formalism, together with the spin-dependent Green’s functions derived for van der Waals monolayers, is employed to evaluate the existence conditions and energies for the impurity modes, which lie above the band of spin-wave states of the pure host material. For realistic parameter values it is found that typically two impurity modes may exist, depending on the spin quantum number for the magnetic impurity atom. Numerical applications are made to CrI3 and Cr2Ge2Te6 as the host materials.