Interfacial magnetic reconstruction and emergent metallicity in oxide heterostructures

Interfaces between correlated oxides and strong spin-orbit coupled materials provide a fertile platform for emergent quantum phases, yet controlling these phases through interfacial magnetic reconstruction remains a major challenge. Here, we observe emergent metallicity in ultrathin SrIrO₃/SrRuO₃ heterostructures formed from insulating constituent layers, and this transition is closely associated with interfacial magnetic reconstruction. Combining transport, magnetometry, and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, supported by first-principles calculations, we show that finite spectral weight at the Fermi level and ferromagnetic signatures emerge in the heterostructures. Our calculations further suggest that a staggered Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction at the interface favors ferromagnetic order in SrRuO₃ and collinear antiferromagnetism in SrIrO₃, relative to the collinear and noncollinear antiferromagnetism in isolated ultrathin SrRuO₃ and SrIrO₃, respectively, providing a possible microscopic framework for the coupled magnetic and electronic reconstruction. Our findings identify interfacial magnetic interactions as a powerful tuning parameter for controlling correlated electronic phases in spin-orbit-coupled oxides, opening pathways toward the design of emergent quantum and topological states.