%0 Journal Article %T A Monte-Carlo Study on the Coupling of Magnetism and Ferroelectricity in the Hexagonal Multiferroic RMnO3 %A Chunruo Duan %A Despina Louca %A Gia-Wei Chern %J Condensed Matter | An Open Access Journal from MDPI %D 2018 %R https://doi.org/10.3390/condmat3040028 %X Abstract The ferroelectric phase transition in RMnO 3 breaks both Z 3 and Z 2 symmetries, giving rise to 6 structural domains. Topological protected vortices are formed at the junctions of all 6 domains, and the ferroelectric phase transition is closely related to these Z 6 vortices. In this work, Monte-Carlo studies on both the ferroelectric and magnetic transition have been performed on RMnO 3 system. The magnetic simulation results on lattices with different structural domain distributions induced by external electric field and simulated quenching show different magnetic transition temperature T s , indicating that the coupling of magnetism and ferroelectricity is through the Z 6 structural domain. At extreme case, lattice quenched from above the ferroelectric transition results in high vortex density, which can drive the system into spin glass. View Full-Tex %K multiferroics %K Monte-Carlo simulation %K Z6 symmetry breaking %U https://www.mdpi.com/2410-3896/3/4/28