No Arabic abstract
In systems with time-reversal symmetry, the orbital magnetization is zero in equilibrium. Recently, it has been proposed that the orbital magnetization can be induced by an electric current in a helical crystal structure in the same manner as that in a classical solenoid. In this paper, we extend this theory and study the current-induced orbital magnetization in a broader class of systems without inversion symmetry. First, we consider polar metals which have no inversion symmetry. We find that the current-induced orbital magnetization appears in a direction perpendicular to the electric current even without spin-orbit coupling. Using the perturbation method, we physically clarify how the current-induced orbital magnetization appears in polar metals. As an example, we calculate the current-induced orbital magnetization in SnP, and find that it might be sufficiently large for measurement. Next, we consider a two-dimensional system without inversion symmetry. We establish a method to calculate the current-induced orbital magnetization in the in-plane direction by using real-space coordinates in the thickness direction. By applying this theory to surfaces and interfaces of insulators, we find that an electric current along surfaces and interfaces induces an orbital magnetization perpendicular to the electric current.
We test whether current-induced magnetization switching due to spin-transfer-torque in ferromagnetic/non-magnetic/ferromagnetic (F/N/F) trilayers changes significantly when scattering within the N-metal layers is changed from ballistic to diffusive. Here ballistic corresponds to a ratio r = lambda/t greater than or equal to 3 for a Cu spacer layer, and diffusive to r = lambda/t less than or equal to 0.4 for a CuGe alloy spacer layer, where lambda is the mean-free-path in the N-layer of fixed thickness t = 10 nm. The average switching currents for the alloy spacer layer are only modestly larger than those for Cu. The best available model predicts a much greater sensitivity of the switching currents to diffuse scattering in the spacer layer than we see.
We demonstrate spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching of amorphous CoTb single layer films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). The switching sustains even the film thickness is above 10 nm, where the critical switching current density keeps almost constant. Without the need of overcoming the strong interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction caused by the heavy metal, a quite low assistant field of ~20 Oe is sufficient to realize the fully switching. The SOT effective field decreases and undergoes a sign change with the decrease of the Tb-concentration, implying that a combination of the spin Hall effect from both Co and Tb as well as an asymmetric spin current absorption accounts for the SOT switching mechanism. Our findings would advance the use of magnetic materials with bulk PMA for energy-efficient and thermal-stable non-volatile memories, and add a different dimension for understanding the ordering and asymmetry in amorphous thin films.
Ferrimagnetic insulators (FiMI) have been intensively used in microwave and magneto-optical devices as well as spin caloritronics, where their magnetization direction plays a fundamental role on the device performance. The magnetization is generally switched by applying external magnetic fields. Here we investigate current-induced spin-orbit torque (SOT) switching of the magnetization in Y3Fe5O12 (YIG)/Pt bilayers with in-plane magnetic anisotropy, where the switching is detected by spin Hall magnetoresistance. Reversible switching is found at room temperature for a threshold current density of 10^7 A cm^-2. The YIG sublattices with antiparallel and unequal magnetic moments are aligned parallel or antiparallel to the direction of current pulses, which is consistent to the Neel order switching in antiferromagnetic system. It is proposed that such a switching behavior may be triggered by the antidamping-torque acting on the two antiparallel sublattices of FiMI. Our finding not only broadens the magnetization switching by electrical means and promotes the understanding of magnetization switching, but also paves the way for all-electrically modulated microwave devices and spin caloritronics with low power consumption.
In materials without spatial inversion symmetry the spin degeneracy of the conduction electrons can be lifted by an antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling. We discuss the influence of this spin-orbit coupling on the spin susceptibility of such superconductors, with a particular emphasis on the recently discovered heavy Fermion superconductor CePt3Si. We find that, for this compound (with tetragonal crystal symmetry,) irrespective of the pairing symmetry, the stable superconducting phases would give a very weak change of the spin susceptibility for fields along the c-axis and an intermediate reduction for fields in the basal plane. We also comment on the consequences for the paramagnetic limiting in this material.
A semiclassical theory for the orbital magnetization due to adiabatic evolutions of Bloch electronic states is proposed. It renders a unified theory for the periodic-evolution pumped orbital magnetization and the orbital magnetoelectric response in insulators by revealing that these two phenomena are the only instances where the induced magnetization is gauge invariant. This theory also accounts for the electric-field induced intrinsic orbital magnetization in two-dimensional metals and Chern insulators. We illustrate the orbital magnetization pumped by microscopic local rotations of atoms, which correspond to phonon modes with angular momentum, in toy models based on honeycomb lattice, and the results are comparable to the pumped spin magnetization via strong Rashba spin orbit coupling. We also show the vital role of the orbital magnetoelectricity in validating the Mott relation between the intrinsic nonlinear anomalous Hall and Ettingshausen effects.