Multipolar ferroelectricity in the Mott regime
Phys. Rev. B 111, 224416 – Published 17 June, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pm3h-pz2p
Abstract
Ferroelectricity has been one major focus in modern fundamental research and technological applications. We consider the physical origin of improper ferroelectricity in Mott insulating materials. Beyond the well-known Katsura-Nagaosa-Balatsky inverse Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya mechanism for noncollinearly ordered magnets, we point out the induction of electric polarizations in multipolar-ordered Mott insulators. Using the multiflavor representation for the multipolar magnetic moments, we can show the crossover or transition from the pure inverse Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya mechanism to the pure multipolar origin for the ferroelectricity and also incorporate the intermediate regime with the mixture of both origins. We expect our results to inspire a reexamination of ferroelectricity in the multipolar-ordered magnets.
