Theory of magnetism in the van der Waals magnet CrI3.

Abstract

We study the microscopical origin of anisotropic ferromagnetism in the van der Waals magnet CrI3. We conclude that the nearest neighbors exchange is well described by the Heisenberg-Kitaev-Gamma (HKGamma) model, and we also found a nonzero Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) on next nearest neighbors. Both Kitaev and DMI are known to generate a non-trivial topology of the magnons in the honeycomb lattice and have been used separately to describe the low energy regime of this material. We discuss that including one or the other leads to different signs of the Chern number. Furthermore, the topological gap at K-point seems to be mainly produced by DMI, despite it is one order of magnitude smaller than Kitaev. Finally, we show that by applying an external electric field perpendicular to the crystal plane, it is possible to induce DMI on nearest neighbors, and this could have consequences in non-collinear spin textures, such as domain walls and skyrmions.