Local and itinerant orbital contributions to the gyromagnetic response of paramagnetic metals
Abstract
Orbitronics exploits orbital angular momentum to generate and manipulate angular-momentum currents for controlling magnetisation, offering new approaches to magnetic memory and logic. A quantitative description of this process requires establishing how orbital angular momentum contributes to magnetic moments and, consequently, to the gyromagnetic response that governs magnetisation dynamics. Here, we present a first-principles framework for calculating the effective gyromagnetic tensor (g') of paramagnetic metals, consistently incorporating local and itinerant orbital contributions, spin-orbit coupling, and both state- and occupation-change effects. Applying the framework to V and Pt, we find that orbital paramagnetic responses are comparable to or larger than spin contributions and substantially modify g' from the free-electron value. The atom-centered approximation can underestimate the orbital response by approximately a factor of two, while neglecting occupation changes produces significant errors in the calculated g'. Our calculated g' values for V and Pt agree with experiment, while their pronounced dependence on band filling reveals a route to engineering angular-momentum responses through electronic-structure control. The results establish the modern theory of orbital magnetism as an essential ingredient for describing gyromagnetic response and provide a framework for identifying materials with enhanced orbital functionalities.
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BibTeX
@misc{ahuja2026local,
title = {{Local and itinerant orbital contributions to the gyromagnetic response of paramagnetic metals}},
author = {Garima Ahuja and Mirco Sastges and Dongwook Go and Shobhana Narasimhan and Stefan Blügel and Yuriy Mokrousov},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.03426},
eprint = {2611.03426},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03426},
note = {CC BY-NC-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Local and itinerant orbital contributions to the gyromagnetic response of paramagnetic metals
AU - Garima Ahuja
AU - Mirco Sastges
AU - Dongwook Go
AU - Shobhana Narasimhan
AU - Stefan Blügel
AU - Yuriy Mokrousov
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.03426
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.03426
AB - Orbitronics exploits orbital angular momentum to generate and manipulate angular-momentum currents for controlling magnetisation, offering new approaches to magnetic memory and logic. A quantitative description of this process requires establishing how orbital angular momentum contributes to magnetic moments and, consequently, to the gyromagnetic response that governs magnetisation dynamics. Here, we present a first-principles framework for calculating the effective gyromagnetic tensor (g') of paramagnetic metals, consistently incorporating local and itinerant orbital contributions, spin-orbit coupling, and both state- and occupation-change effects. Applying the framework to V and Pt, we find that orbital paramagnetic responses are comparable to or larger than spin contributions and substantially modify g' from the free-electron value. The atom-centered approximation can underestimate the orbital response by approximately a factor of two, while neglecting occupation changes produces significant errors in the calculated g'. Our calculated g' values for V and Pt agree with experiment, while their pronounced dependence on band filling reveals a route to engineering angular-momentum responses through electronic-structure control. The results establish the modern theory of orbital magnetism as an essential ingredient for describing gyromagnetic response and provide a framework for identifying materials with enhanced orbital functionalities.
ER -