No Arabic abstract
Ultrathin ferromagnets with frustrated exchange and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can support topological solitons such as skyrmions and antiskyrmions, which are metastable and can be considered particle-antiparticle counterparts. When spin-orbit torques are applied, the motion of an isolated antiskyrmion driven beyond its Walker limit can generate skyrmion-antiskyrmion pairs. Here, we use atomistic spin dynamics simulations to shed light on the scattering processes involved in this pair generation. Under certain conditions a proliferation of these particles and antiparticles can appear with a growth rate and production asymmetry that depend on the strength of the chiral interactions and the dissipative component of the spin-orbit torques. These features are largely determined by scattering processes between antiskyrmions, which can be elastic or result in bound states or annihilation.
We analyze the electric current and magnetic field driven domain wall motion in perpendicularly magnetized ultrathin ferromagnetic films in the presence of interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and both out-of-plane and in-plane uniaxial anisotropies. We obtain exact analytical Walker-type solutions in the form of one-dimensional domain walls moving with constant velocity due to both spin-transfer torques and out-of-plane magnetic field. These solutions are embedded into a larger family of propagating solutions found numerically. Within the considered model, we find the dependencies of the domain wall velocity on the material parameters and demonstrate that adding in-plane anisotropy may produce domain walls moving with velocities in excess of 500 m/s in realistic materials under moderate fields and currents.
Skyrmions and antiskyrmions in magnetic ultrathin films are characterised by a topological charge describing how the spins wind around their core. This topology governs their response to forces in the rigid core limit. However, when internal core excitations are relevant, the dynamics become far richer. We show that current-induced spin-orbit torques can lead to phenomena such as trochoidal motion and skyrmion-antiskyrmion pair generation that only occurs for either the skyrmion or antiskyrmion, depending on the symmetry of the underlying Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Such dynamics are induced by core deformations, leading to a time-dependent helicity that governs the motion of the skyrmion and antiskyrmion core. We compute the dynamical phase diagram through a combination of atomistic spin simulations, reduced-variable modelling, and machine learning algorithms. It predicts how spin-orbit torques can control the type of motion and the possibility to generate skyrmion lattices by antiskyrmion seeding.
Magnetic skyrmions are chiral spin textures that hold great promise as nanoscale information carriers. Since their first observation at room temperature, progress has been made in their current-induced manipulation, with fast motion reported in stray-field-coupled multilayers. However, the complex spin textures with hybrid chiralities and large power dissipation in these multilayers limit their practical implementation and the fundamental understanding of their dynamics. Here, we report on the current-driven motion of Neel skyrmions with diameters in the 100-nm range in an ultrathin Pt/Co/MgO trilayer. We find that these skyrmions can be driven at a speed of 100 m/s and exhibit a drive-dependent skyrmion Hall effect, which is accounted for by the effect of pinning. Our experiments are well substantiated by an analytical model of the skyrmion dynamics as well as by micromagnetic simulations including material inhomogeneities. This good agreement is enabled by the simple skyrmion spin structure in our system and a thorough characterization of its static and dynamical properties.
We find numerically skyrmionic textures with skyrmion number Q=0 in ferromagnets with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and perpendicular anisotropy. These have the form of a skyrmion-antiskyrmion pair and may be called chiral droplets. They are stable in an infinite film as well as in disc-shaped magnetic elements. Droplets are found for values of the parameters close to the transition from the ferromagnetic to the spiral phase. We study their motion under spin-transfer torque. They move in the direction of the spin flow and, thus, their dynamics are drastically different than the Hall dynamics of the standard Q=0 skyrmion.
Ferromagnetic behaviour has been observed experimentally for the first time in nanostructured Manganese. Ultrathin ($sim$ 0.6 nm) Manganese nanosheets have been synthesized inside the two dimensional channels of sol-gel derived Na-4 mica. The magnetic properties of the confined system are measured within 2K-300K temperature range. The confined structure is found to show a ferromagnetic behaviour with a nonzero coercivity value. The coercivity value remains positive throughout the entire temperature range of measurement. The experimental variation of susceptibility as a function of temperature has been satisfactorily explained on the basis of a two dimensional system with a Heisenberg Hamiltonian involving direct exchange interaction.