Life times and chirality of spin waves in antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic FeRh from the perspective of time-dependent density functional theory

Abstract

The study of the spin excitations in antiferromagnetic (AFM) and ferromagnetic (FM) phases of FeRh is reported. We demonstrate that although the Fe atomic moments are well defined there is a number of important phenomena absent in the Heisenberg description: Landau damping of spin waves, large Rh moments induced by the AFM magnons, the formation of the optical magnons terminated by Stoner excitations. We relate the properties of the spin-wave damping to the features of the Stoner continuum and compare the chirality of the spin excitations in AFM, FM and paramagnetic (PM) systems.