Atomic-Scale Magnetic Toroidal Dipole under Odd-Parity Hybridization

Abstract: Magnetic toroidal dipole (MTD) is one of a fundamental constituent to induce magneto-electric effects in the absence of both spatial inversion and time-reversal symmetries. We report on a microscopic investigation of the atomic-scale MTD in solids by taking into account the orbital degree of freedom with a different parity. We construct an effective two-orbital $d$-$f$ tight-binding model on a polar tetragonal system for describing the atomic-scale MTD, which are obtained by incorporating the atomic spin-orbit coupling and odd-parity hybridization. The effective model exhibits two types of the MTDs: in-plane $x, y$ components activated through spontaneous ferromagnetic ordering or external magnetic field and an out-of-plane $z$ component by a spontaneous odd-parity hybridization without spin moments. We show that the intra-orbital (inter-orbital) Coulomb interaction in multi-orbital systems plays an important role in stabilizing the in-plane (out-of-plane) MTD orderings. We also examine the magneto-electric effect under each MTD ordering by calculating a linear response tensor. We show that the odd-parity hybridization enhances the magneto-electric effect for the in-plane MTDs, while it suppresses that for the out-of-plane MTD.