Instability in Magnetic Materials with a Dynamical Axion Field

Creators: Ooguri, Hirosi; Oshikawa, Masaki

Abstract

It has been pointed out that axion electrodynamics exhibits instability in the presence of a background electric field. We show that the instability leads to a complete screening of an applied electric field above a certain critical value and the excess energy is converted into a magnetic field. We clarify the physical origin of the screening effect and discuss its possible experimental realization in magnetic materials where magnetic fluctuations play the role of the dynamical axion field.

Additional Information

© 2012 American Physical Society. Received 14 December 2011; published 20 April 2012. We thank Y. Ando, O. Bergman, J. Gauntlett, D. Hsieh, J. Maldacena, and X.-L. Qi for useful discussions. We thank the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics (NSF Grant No. 1066293) and the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara (NSF Grant No. PHY05-51164). The work of H. O. is supported in part by U.S. DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-92-ER40701, the WPI Initiative of MEXT of Japan, and JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. C-23540285. The work of M. O. is supported in part by JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 21540381.

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevLett.108.161803.pdf

Submitted - 1112.1414v1.pdf

Files

1112.1414v1.pdf

Files (667.9 kB)

Name	Size	Download all
1112.1414v1.pdf md5:c9edcf422b04c3596c8eb5f6db7f6541	412.8 kB	Preview Download
PhysRevLett.108.161803.pdf md5:9699740e3b70e4e619078f35385e1b28	255.0 kB	Preview Download

Additional details

	All versions	This version
Views	0	0
Downloads	0	0
Data volume	0 Bytes	0 Bytes