Colloquium Ehrenfestii

Location: Sitterzaal, LION
Time: 19:30 hrs

abstract
The coupling between charge and spins degrees of freedom in Mott insulators leads to many spectacular effects, such as the magnetic control of electric polarization, giant magnetocapacitance and excitation of spin waves by the electric component of light. Symmetry
analysis of magnetoelectric interactions provides a unified description of seemingly unrelated phenomena and gives insights into their microscopic origin. I will discuss the electric polarization induced by magnetic domain walls, the linear magnetoelectric effect and electromagnon excitation in magnets with spontaneous monopole and toroidal magnetic moments as well as a peculiar dynamic coupling in multi-orbital Mott insulators, which makes possible to move spin textures with an applied electric field and to excite the rotation of vortices and skyrmions in nanodiscs by circularly polarized light.