No Arabic abstract
Topological spin textures have attracted much attention both for fundamental physics and spintronics applications. Among them, antiskyrmions possess a unique spin configuration with Bloch-type and Neel-type domain walls due to anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in the noncentrosymmetric crystal structure. However, antiskyrmions have thus far only been observed in a few Heusler compounds with $D_{2mathrm{d}}$ symmetry. Here, we report a new material Fe$_{1.9}$Ni$_{0.9}$Pd$_{0.2}$P in a different symmetry class ($S_4$ symmetry), where antiskyrmions exist over a wide temperature region including room temperature, and transform to skyrmions upon changing magnetic field and lamella thickness. The periodicity of magnetic textures greatly depends on crystal thickness, and domains with anisotropic sawtooth fractals are observed at the surface of thick crystals, which are attributed to the interplay between dipolar interaction and DMI as governed by crystal symmetry. Our findings provide a new arena to study antiskyrmions, and should stimulate further research on topological spin textures and their applications.
Topological magnon is a vibrant research field gaining more and more attention in the past few years. Among many theoretical proposals and limited experimental studies, ferromagnetic Kagome lattice emerges as one of the most elucidating systems. Here we report neutron scattering studies of YMn6Sn6, a metallic system consisting of ferromagnetic Kagome planes. This system undergoes a commensurate-to-incommensurate antiferromagnetic phase transition upon cooling with the incommensurability along the out-of-plane direction. We observe magnon band gap opening at the symmetry-protected K points and ascribe this feature to the antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interactions. Our observation supports the existence of topological Dirac magnons in both the commensurate collinear and incommensurate coplanar magnetic orders, which is further corroborated by symmetry analysis. This finding places YMn6Sn6 as a promising candidate for room-temperature magnon spintronics applications.
We report that in a $beta$-Mn-type chiral magnet Co$_9$Zn$_9$Mn$_2$, skyrmions are realized as a metastable state over a wide temperature range, including room temperature, via field-cooling through the thermodynamic equilibrium skyrmion phase that exists below a transition temperature $T_mathrm{c}$ $sim$ 400 K. The once-created metastable skyrmions survive at zero magnetic field both at and above room temperature. Such robust skyrmions in a wide temperature and magnetic field region demonstrate the key role of topology, and provide a significant step toward technological applications of skyrmions in bulk chiral magnets.
Topological matter is known to exhibit unconventional surface states and anomalous transport owing to unusual bulk electronic topology. In this study, we use photoemission spectroscopy and quantum transport to elucidate the topology of the room temperature magnet Co$_2$MnGa. We observe sharp bulk Weyl fermion line dispersions indicative of nontrivial topological invariants present in the magnetic phase. On the surface of the magnet, we observe electronic wave functions that take the form of drumheads, enabling us to directly visualize the crucial components of the bulk-boundary topological correspondence. By considering the Berry curvature field associated with the observed topological Weyl fermion lines, we quantitatively account for the giant anomalous Hall response observed in our samples. Our experimental results suggest a rich interplay of strongly correlated electrons and topology in this quantum magnet.
We have investigated anomalous Hall effect and magnetoresistance in a noncentrosymmetric itinerant magnet Cr$_{11}$Ge$_{19}$. While the temperature- and magnetic-field-dependent anomalous Hall conductivity is just proportional to the magnetization above 30 K, it is more enhanced in the lower temperature region. The magnitude of negative magnetoresistance begins to increase toward low temperature around 30 K. The anisotropic magnetoresistance emerges at similar temperature. Because there is no anomaly in the temperature dependence of magnetization around 30 K, the origin of these observations in transport properties is ascribed to some electronic structure with the energy scale of 30 K. We speculate this is caused by the spin splitting due to breaking of spatial inversion symmetry.
Following over a decade of intense efforts to enable major progress in spintronics devices and quantum information technology by means of materials in which the electronic structure exhibits non-trivial topological properties, three key challenges are still unresolved. First, the identification of topological band degeneracies that are generically rather than accidentally located at the Fermi level. Second, the ability to easily control such topological degeneracies. And third, to identify generic topological degeneracies in large, multi-sheeted Fermi surfaces. Combining de Haas - van Alphen spectroscopy with density functional theory and band-topology calculations, we report here that the non-symmorphic symmetries in ferromagnetic MnSi generate nodal planes (NPs), which enforce topological protectorates (TPs) with substantial Berry curvatures at the intersection of the NPs with the Fermi surface (FS) regardless of the complexity of the FS. We predict that these TPs will be accompanied by sizeable Fermi arcs subject to the direction of the magnetization. Deriving the symmetry conditions underlying topological NPs, we show that the 1651 magnetic space groups comprise 7 grey groups and 26 black-and-white groups with topological NPs, including the space group of ferromagnetic MnSi. Thus, the identification of symmetry-enforced TPs on the FS of MnSi that may be controlled with a magnetic field suggests the existence of similar properties, amenable for technological exploitation, in a large number of materials.