Magnetic field control of continuous N\'eel vector rotation and N\'eel temperature in a van der Waals antiferromagnet

In a collinear antiferromagnet, spins tend to cant towards the direction of an applied magnetic field, thereby decreasing the energy of the system. The canting angle becomes negligible when the magnetic field is small so that the induced anisotropic energy is substantially lower than the exchange energy. However, this tiny anisotropy can play a significant role when the intrinsic anisotropy of the antiferromagnet is small. In our work, we conduct direct imaging of the N\'eel vector in a two-dimensional easy-plane antiferromagnet, MnPSe₃, with negligible spin canting under an external in-plane magnetic field. The small inherent in-plane anisotropy allows for the continuous rotation of the N\'eel vector by ramping up the magnetic field in samples from the bulk to the monolayer. In monolayer samples, the applied magnetic field elevates the N\'eel temperature 10\% at 5 tesla, as the combination of intrinsic and field-induced anisotropies set a critical temperature scale for fluctuations of the otherwise disordered N\'eel vector field. Our study illuminates the contribution of field-induced anisotropy in two dimensional magnets with in-plane anisotropy. We also demonstrate that the strain can tune the spin flop transition field strength by one order of magnitude.