Origin of ferroelectricity in high TcT_c magnetic ferroelectric CuO

"Magnetic ferroelectric" has been found in a wide range of spiral magnets. However, these materials all suffer from low critical temperatures, which are usually below 40 K, due to strong spin frustration. Recently, CuO has been found to be multiferroic at much higher ordering temperature ($\sim$ 230K). To clarify the origin of the high ordering temperature in CuO, we investigate the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of CuO via first-principles methods. We find that CuO has very special nearly commensurate spiral magnetic structure, which is stabilized via the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. The spin frustration in CuO is relatively weak, which is one of the main reasons that the compound have high ordering temperature. We propose that high $T_c$ magnetic ferroelectric materials can be found in double sublattices of magnetic structures similar to that of CuO.Comment: Significantly revised, errors in previous version corrected, add a new figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1111.341

Ferroelectricity driven by the non-centrosymmetric magnetic ordering in multiferroic TbMn_2O_5: a first-principles study

The ground state structural, electronic and magnetic properties of multiferroic TbMn$_2$O$_5$ are investigated via first-principles calculations. We show that the ferroelectricity in TbMn$_2$O$_5$ is driven by the non-centrosymmetric magnetic ordering, without invoking the spin-orbit coupling and non-collinear spins. The {\it intrinsic} electric polarization in this compound is calculated to be 1187 $nC\cdot$ cm$^{-2}$, an order of magnitude larger than previously thought

Conquer the fine structure splitting of excitons in self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots via combined stresses

Eliminating the fine structure splitting (FSS) of excitons in self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) is essential to the generation of high quality entangled photon pairs. It has been shown that the FSS has a lower bound under uniaxial stress. In this letter, we show that the FSS of excitons in a general self-assembled InGaAs/GaAs QD can be fully suppressed via combined stresses along the [110] and [010] directions. The result is confirmed by atomic empirical pseudopotential calculations. For all the QDs we studied, the FSS can be tuned to be vanishingly small ($<$ 0.1 $\mu$eV), which is sufficient small for high quality entangled photon emission.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure, 1 tabl