Symmetry Control of Emergent Magnetism in 2D Oxides and Oxide Heterostructures*

The transition metal oxides exhibit a variety of interesting properties that are important for many practical applications, such as the dielectrics, magnetism, ferroelectricity, superconductivity, multiferroicity, etc. Such a rich plethora of functional properties primarily originate from the hybridized bands between the transition metal and the oxygen atoms. In artificially heterostructured oxide thin films, there exist the exciting new properties that are absent in the bulk materials, i.e. the emergent properties in oxide heterostructures. The understanding of the fundamental physics behind these emergent properties remains a huge challenge in condensed matter physics and attracts a lot of research interests in recent days. In this talk, I will introduce our recent advances in understanding the emergent magnetism in 2D oxide ferromagnets and a number of magnetic oxide heterostructures, from the symmetry aspects of the oxygen sublattice, including the octahedral rotations, tilts and the oxygen vacancies. Our study reveals the importance of the symmetry of the oxygen sublattice in shaping the emergent magnetism in low dimensional correlated oxide heterostructures.