Anomalous Ferromagnetism of quasiparticle doped holes in cuprate heterostructures revealed using resonant soft X-ray magnetic scattering.

Ong, B L; Jayaraman, K; Diao, C; Whitcher, T J; Jain, A; Hung, H; Breese, M B H; Tok, E S et al. · Nat Commun · 2022

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report strong ferromagnetism of quasiparticle doped holes both within the ab-plane and along the c-axis of Cu-O planes in low-dimensional Au/d-La<sub>1.8</sub>Ba<sub>0.2</sub>CuO<sub>4</sub>/LaAlO<sub>3</sub>(001) heterostructures (d = 4, 8 and 12 unit-cells) using resonant soft X-ray and magnetic scattering together with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. Interestingly, ferromagnetism is stronger at a hole doped peak and at an upper Hubbard band of O with spin-polarization degree as high as 40%, revealing strong ferromagnetism of Mottness. For in-ab-plane spin-polarizations, the spin of doped holes in O2p-Cu3d-O2p is a triplet state yielding strong ferromagnetism. For out-of-ab-plane spin-polarization, while the spins of doped holes in both O2p-O2p and Cu3d-Cu3d are triplet states, the spin of doped holes in Cu3d-O2p is a singlet state yielding ferrimagnetism. A ferromagnetic-(002) Bragg-peak of the doped holes is observed and enhanced as a function of d revealing strong ferromagnetism coupling between Cu-O layers along the c-axis.