Zeeman Spin Photocurrents without Spin Textures
Abstract
Inversion symmetry forbids bulk second-order spin photocurrents driven solely by electric-dipole coupling. We show that interference between the electric-dipole and spin Zeeman couplings of light enables Zeeman spin-shift and spin-injection currents in centrosymmetric magnets. Our microscopic theory and systematic symmetry analysis establish the allowed responses and polarization selection rules for both spin-degenerate and spin-split antiferromagnets, with and without spin--orbit coupling (SOC). In collinear magnets without SOC, spin injection vanishes, whereas a pure spin-shift current survives independently of the carrier scattering time. This response arises from transverse electronic spin coherences generated by the optical magnetic field, while the ordered moments remain collinear and fixed. Model analyses validate the mechanism, and first-principles calculations for MnF2 predict experimentally accessible spin photocurrents. These findings establish a general framework for optical spin-current generation in centrosymmetric magnets, including a SOC-free pure-spin mechanism particularly relevant to altermagnets.
Related
- Spin and Charge Photocurrents from Electric-Magnetic Dipole Interference in Centrosymmetric Crystals
- Zeeman spin quantum geometry and intrinsic gyrotropic spin current
- Momentum-resolved thermodynamics and barrier-free order-parameter collapse in spin-orbit-coupled superconductors under a Zeeman field
- Zeeman Quantum Geometry of the Layer Pseudo-spin
- Zeeman-field-induced three-spin interactions and relativistic coupling to the scalar spin chirality
BibTeX
@misc{xiao2026zeeman,
title = {{Zeeman Spin Photocurrents without Spin Textures}},
author = {Xihua Xiao and Ruizhi Dong and Ruixiang Fei},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.00655},
eprint = {2611.00655},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00655},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Zeeman Spin Photocurrents without Spin Textures
AU - Xihua Xiao
AU - Ruizhi Dong
AU - Ruixiang Fei
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/01
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.00655
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00655
AB - Inversion symmetry forbids bulk second-order spin photocurrents driven solely by electric-dipole coupling. We show that interference between the electric-dipole and spin Zeeman couplings of light enables Zeeman spin-shift and spin-injection currents in centrosymmetric magnets. Our microscopic theory and systematic symmetry analysis establish the allowed responses and polarization selection rules for both spin-degenerate and spin-split antiferromagnets, with and without spin--orbit coupling (SOC). In collinear magnets without SOC, spin injection vanishes, whereas a pure spin-shift current survives independently of the carrier scattering time. This response arises from transverse electronic spin coherences generated by the optical magnetic field, while the ordered moments remain collinear and fixed. Model analyses validate the mechanism, and first-principles calculations for MnF_2 predict experimentally accessible spin photocurrents. These findings establish a general framework for optical spin-current generation in centrosymmetric magnets, including a SOC-free pure-spin mechanism particularly relevant to altermagnets.
ER -