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Ferroaxial phonons in chiral and polar $Ni {Co}_{2} Te O_{6}$

V. A. Martinez^1,*, Y. Gao¹, J. Yang ¹, F. Lyzwa ^1,2, Z. Liu ³, C. J. Won ⁴, K. Du ⁵, V. Kiryukhin ⁵, S. W. Cheong⁵ et al.

A. A. Sirenko ¹

¹Department of Physics, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, New Jersey 07102, USA
²NSLS-II, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
³Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607-7059, USA
⁴Laboratory for Pohang Emergent Materials and Max Plank POSTECH Center for Complex Phase Materials, Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology, Pohang 37673, Korea
⁵Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

^*Contact author: vladimir.martinez@njit.edu

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Phys. Rev. B 112, 064411 – Published 7 August, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/nm7f-pycy

Abstract

Perfect circular dichroism has been observed in Raman scattering by optical phonons in single chiral domain $Ni {Co}_{2} Te O_{6}$ crystals. The selection rules for optical phonons are determined by the combination of the chiral structure $C$ and electric polarization P along the $c$ axis. These two symmetry operations are equivalent to the ferroaxial order ( $C$ ·P) = A, so the observed optical phonons are referred to as ferroaxial. For a given Raman scattering geometry, the observed effect may also be described as a perfect nonreciprocal propagation of the ferroaxial optical phonons, whose preferable $\vec{q}$ -vector direction is determined by the sign of A. The combination of Raman scattering and polarization plane rotation of the transmitted white light allows for identification of the direction of electric polarization P in monodomain chiral crystals. In addition to the ferroaxial selection rules for optical phonons, a weaker ferroaxial dichroism was observed for the magnon peak at 18 $c m^{- 1}$ .

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Ferroaxial phonons in chiral and polar $Ni {Co}_{2} Te O_{6}$

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Ferroaxial phonons in chiral and polar NiCo2TeO6

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Ferroaxial phonons in chiral and polar $Ni {Co}_{2} Te O_{6}$