Ab initio study of spin-spiral noncollinear magnetism in a free-standing Fe(110) monolayer under in-plane strain

Abstract

We investigate the magnetic phase transition from collinear ferromagnetic (FM) ordering to noncollinear spin-spiral (SS) ordering in an Fe(110) monolayer under in-plane strain by performing fully unconstrained first-principles spin-density-functional calculations. The FM Fe(110) monolayer undergoes a FM-SS phase transition on the application of in-plane compression, whereas the application of tension keeps the system FM. The stability and wavelength of the excited SS state are further increased by compressive strains, especially along [ī10]. The FM-SS transition in the isotropically strained monolayer is dominated by competing exchange interactions between the ferromagnetically coupled first neighbor and the antiferromagnetically coupled second neighbor; the third neighbor also contributes to the transition under anisotropic strain. In addition, we demonstrate the stabilization mechanism of SS noncollinear magnetism from the electronic band structures: The noncollinear SS state is stabilized by a remarkable interband repulsion between the majority and minority spins, which occurs under in-plane compression