Field-amplified readouts of weak altermagnetic exchange in MnF$_2$

Abstract

MnF$_2$, the textbook two-sublattice antiferromagnet, has reemerged as a prototypical altermagnet, yet the sublattice-odd exchange that defines this identity remains under active debate: it enters the magnon splitting only in quadrature with the dipole--dipole interaction, its magnitude suppressed and its sign erased. An overdetermined first-principles total-energy mapping resolves this scale as a seventh-neighbor imbalance $\delta{J_7}\simeq+8~\mu$eV. The resulting Hamiltonian, with the dipole--dipole interaction included explicitly, reproduces the low-energy gap and the visible finite-momentum splitting. A longitudinal field $B\parallel c$ then acts as a linear amplifier of the hidden scale, opening two signed, field-linear readouts. The first is the compensation field $B^\ast(\mathbf Q)$, the position of minimum splitting, which is equal and opposite at the rotation-related partner momenta: a shift from zero field is itself evidence of a finite imbalance, its side gives the sign, and its magnitude, $|B^\ast|\simeq0.34$~T here, gives the scale. The second is the fixed-field contrast of the partner splittings, $\simeq0.14$~meV at $1$~T, six times the zero-field excess: a sign check from just two spectra. Both readouts survive a $0.12$~meV energy resolution, and the construction carries over to any easy-axis collinear altermagnet, bringing $\mu$eV altermagnetic exchange within present instrumental reach.