Magneto-optical Kerr Effect in Ferroelectric Antiferromagnetic Two- Dimensional Heterostructures

We studied the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) of twodimensional (2D) heterostructure CrI3/In2Se3/CrI3 using density functional theory calculations and symmetry analysis. The spontaneous polarization in the In2Se3 ferroelectric layer and the antiferromagnetic ordering in CrI3 layers break the mirror and the time-reversal symmetry, thus activating MOKE. We show that the Kerr angle can be reversed by either the polarization or the antiferromagnetic order parameter. Our results suggest that ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic 2D heterostructures could be exploited for ultracompact information storage devices, where the information is encoded by the two ferroelectric or the two time-reversed antiferromagnetic states and the readout is performed optically by MOKE.

Automated summary

We studied the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) in a two-dimensional heterostructure CrI3/In2Se3/CrI3 using density functional theory calculations and symmetry analysis. The mirror and time-reversal symmetries are broken by the spontaneous polarization in the In2Se3 ferroelectric layer and the antiferromagnetic ordering in the CrI3 layers, thereby activating MOKE. Our results demonstrate that the Kerr angle can be reversed by either the polarization or the antiferromagnetic order parameter. This suggests that ferroelectric and antiferromagnetic 2D heterostructures could be utilized for compact information storage devices, with the information encoded by the two ferroelectric or the two time-reversed antiferromagnetic states and read optically via MOKE.