Theory of magnetoelectric response in Co4Nb2O9

The mechanism of the observed novel magnetoelectric effects in Co4Nb2O9 is addressed by calculating the magnetoelectric tensor of the realistic effective model derived from the first principles calculation. The obtained magnetic-field angle dependence of the electric polarization qualitatively reproduces the experimental result. It is shown that the orbital contribution dominates the magnetoelectric response and the angle dependence can be understood by the first order perturbation with respect to the spin-orbit coupling.