Signatures of canted antiferromagnetism in infinite-layer nickelates studied by x-ray magnetic dichroism

We report an experimental study of the magnetic properties of infinite-layer Nd1-xSrxNiO2 (x=0 and 0.2) thin films by x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) at Ni L3,2 and Nd M5,4 edges. We show the presence of a field induced out-of-plane Ni1+ spin moment, reaching values of 0.25μB/Ni at 9 T in the case of superconducting Nd0.8Sr0.2NiO2. The magnetic field and temperature dependencies of the Ni L3,2 XMCD data can be explained by an out-of-plane canting of in-plane anti-ferromagnetically correlated Ni1+ spins. The canting is most likely attributed to the symmetry lowering of the NiO2 planes, observed via four-dimensional scanning transmission electron microscopy, which can trigger a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction among the Ni1+ spins.