Orbital-Splitter Current in Altermagnets

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Ghorai, Koushik, Sarkar, Sayan, Agarwal, Amit
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866909011396263936
author Ghorai, Koushik
Sarkar, Sayan
Agarwal, Amit
author_facet Ghorai, Koushik
Sarkar, Sayan
Agarwal, Amit
contents In collinear altermagnets, the real-space rotational symmetry of opposite spin sublattices generates a large nonrelativistic spin-splitter current. Orbital transport in this setting has remained largely unexplored. Here, we introduce the orbital-splitter current (OSC), an orbital analogue of the spin-splitter current, and derive its Drude and orbital Berry curvature contributions using a density-matrix framework. We show that the $d$-wave altermagnet $\mathrm{FeSb}_2$ realizes a purely intrinsic OSC because mirror symmetries suppress the Drude channel by forcing the orbital magnetic moment to vanish. The OSC response is strongly anisotropic and, for selected field orientations, exceeds the spin-splitter current by nearly a factor of four. We further show that the OSC generates a damping-like torque in an altermagnet-ferromagnet heterostructure and, when combined with the spin-splitter current, significantly reduces the magnetization switching time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_01812
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Orbital-Splitter Current in Altermagnets
Ghorai, Koushik
Sarkar, Sayan
Agarwal, Amit
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
In collinear altermagnets, the real-space rotational symmetry of opposite spin sublattices generates a large nonrelativistic spin-splitter current. Orbital transport in this setting has remained largely unexplored. Here, we introduce the orbital-splitter current (OSC), an orbital analogue of the spin-splitter current, and derive its Drude and orbital Berry curvature contributions using a density-matrix framework. We show that the $d$-wave altermagnet $\mathrm{FeSb}_2$ realizes a purely intrinsic OSC because mirror symmetries suppress the Drude channel by forcing the orbital magnetic moment to vanish. The OSC response is strongly anisotropic and, for selected field orientations, exceeds the spin-splitter current by nearly a factor of four. We further show that the OSC generates a damping-like torque in an altermagnet-ferromagnet heterostructure and, when combined with the spin-splitter current, significantly reduces the magnetization switching time.
title Orbital-Splitter Current in Altermagnets
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.01812