Discovery of incipient ferrotoroidics from atomistic simulations.
An effective Hamiltonian technique is used to investigate the effect of quantum vibrations on properties of stress-free KTaO3 nanodots under open-circuit electrical boundary conditions. We discover that these vibrations suppress the paraelectric-to-ferrotoroidic transition, or, equivalently, wash out the formation of vortex states. Such suppression leads to the saturation of the so-called ferrotoroidic susceptibility at low temperature, and to a peculiar local structure that exhibits short-range, needlelike correlations of the individual toroidal moments.
Prosandeev
S
S
Physics Department, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA.
Akbarzadeh
A R
AR
Bellaiche
L
L