Antiferromagnetism of two-dimensional electronic gas on light-irradiated SrTiO3 and at LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces

To gain an insight into the origin of tunable two-dimensional (2D) electronic liquid at the interfaces of transition-metal oxides, we address properties of a conducting layer on the light-irradiated surfaces of SrTiO3; the energy spectrum of the latter is known and consists of the titanium dxz/dyz and dxy bands. Recently, Santander-Syro et al (2014 Nature Mater. 13 1085) revealed that the dxy bands actually comprise two chiral branches with the Kramers degeneracy at the zone center lifted in the absence of a magnetic moment. We suggest that interacting electrons on the irradiated SrTiO3 go over into a magnetic phase as the result of one of the instabilities of the 2D Fermi liquid with exchange interactions, and point out the concrete antiferromagnetic order parameter. Large energy scales of the order of Fermi energy ∼0.1 eV inherent in this mechanism warrant stability of the magnetic ground state against ever-present effects of disorder. Arguments are given that electrons at the irradiated SrTiO3 surface and at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interfaces undergo a kind of first-order transformation into one and the same phase of the 2D electronic Fermi liquid with reduced magnetic symmetry.