Ab-initio discovery of high-temperature topological magnetic materials

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Since the initial discovery of topological insulators, a plethora of topological electronic phases was uncovered, guided by theoretical design and materials research. While among topological materials, a subclass of magnetic materials is perhaps the most exciting outlet for novel ideas in the field, the progress in realization of various time-reversal broken topological phases has been so far quite slow. This can be associated with the fact that optimal magnetic materials which exhibit stable magnetism and stable quantized magneto-transport properties at high temperatures have not been designed to date. With our consortium project - which is a closely entangled Sino-German effort comprising Wanxiang Feng and Yugui Yao as PIs of the Beijing team, and Yuriy Mokrousov and Jairo Sinova as PIs of the Mainz team - we will address this challenge. With the help of theoretical tools that the consortium has accumulated and will develop further, we will aim at a theoretical discovery of novel magnetic topological materials which have optimized properties in terms of their electronic structure and critical temperatures. We will predict a variety of topological phases that can arise in topological magnets and suggest the means of their characterization in terms of known and novel linear and non-linear transport effects sensitive to the interplay of symmetry, topology, structural and magnetic chirality, and thermal fluctuations. We will draw a general picture of the emergence and behavior of complex topological phases in magnetic materials at high temperatures, thereby making a qualitative leap forward in the area of topological spintronics, and laying a foundation for experimental exploration of topological magnetism.