Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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FM: Fachverband Funktionsmaterialien
FM 8: Multiferroics and Magnetoelectric Coupling (joint session MA/FM)
FM 8.7: Talk
Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 11:15–11:30, POT/0112
Optical detection of magnetic order in SmFe3(BO3)4 — •Bálint Beke1, Bence Szász1, I. A. Gudim2, L. N. Bezmaternykh2, Dávid Szaller1, and Sándor Bordács1 — 1Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Budapest, Hungary — 2Krasnoyarsk, Russia
The chiral crystal structure of SmFe3(BO3)4 hosts an easy-plane antiferromagnetic phase below 32 K. Due to the broken inversion, the magnetic order induces electric polarization in this compound, but this polarization averages out to zero when domains are randomly oriented in the ab plane. We studied the 4f-4f excitations of Sm3+ ions using polarization resolved magneto-optical spectroscopy. Low magnetic fields, <2 T give rise to linear dichroism that we associate with the rearrangement of antiferromagnetic domains. In finite fields, we could determine the polarization selection rules in a state where the orientation of the antiferromagnetic domains is well defined. Moreover, we detected non-reciprocal absorption of light, which is a finite frequency fingerprint of the optical magnetoelectric effect.
Keywords: SmFe3(BO3)4; antiferromagnet; linear dichroism