AVS 62nd International Symposium & Exhibition
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Tuesday Sessions
       Session MI+SA-TuA

Invited Paper MI+SA-TuA3
Chiral Spin Textures in Ultrathin Ferromagnets

Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 3:00 pm, Room 230A

Session: Spin Currents, Spin Textures and Hybrid Magnetic Structures
Presenter: Geoffrey Beach, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Correspondent: Click to Email

Spin orbit coupling at interfaces in ultrathin magnetic films can give rise to chiral magnetic textures such as homochiral domain walls and skyrmions, as well as current-induced torques that can effectively manipulate them [1-3]. This talk will describe the statics and dynamics of chiral spin textures in thin-film nanowires stabilized by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMI) at a heavy metal/ferromagnet interface. We show that the DMI depends strongly on the heavy metal, differing by a factor of ~20 between Pt and Ta [2], and describe the influence of strong DMI on domain wall dynamics [1,2] and spin Hall effect switching [3]. We present high-resolution magnetic imaging of static magnetic textures that directly reveal the role of DMI and allow its strength to be quantified [4]. Finally, we will describe how a gate voltage can be used to control interfacial magnetism and magnetic domain walls in nanowires by manipulating interfacial oxygen coordination and magnetic anisotropy at a ferromagnet/oxide interface [5].

[1] S. Emori, et al., Nature Mater. 12, 611 (2013).

[2] S. Emori, et al., Phys. Rev. B 90, 184427 (2014).

[3] N. Perez, et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 092403 (2014).

[4] S. Woo, et al., arXiv:1502.07376 (2015).

[5] U. Bauer, et al., Nature Mater. 14, 174 (2015).