In the quest for post-CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technologies, driven by the need for improved efficiency and performance, topologically protected ferromagnetic 'whirls' such as ...skyrmions
and their anti-particles have shown great promise as solitonic information carriers in racetrack memory-in-logic or neuromorphic devices
. However, the presence of dipolar fields in ferromagnets, which restricts the formation of ultrasmall topological textures
, and the deleterious skyrmion Hall effect, when skyrmions are driven by spin torques
, have thus far inhibited their practical implementation. Antiferromagnetic analogues, which are predicted to demonstrate relativistic dynamics, fast deflection-free motion and size scaling, have recently become the subject of intense focus
, but they have yet to be experimentally demonstrated in natural antiferromagnetic systems. Here we realize a family of topological antiferromagnetic spin textures in α-Fe
O
-an Earth-abundant oxide insulator-capped with a platinum overlayer. By exploiting a first-order analogue of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism
, we stabilize exotic merons and antimerons (half-skyrmions)
and their pairs (bimerons)
, which can be erased by magnetic fields and regenerated by temperature cycling. These structures have characteristic sizes of the order of 100 nanometres and can be chemically controlled via precise tuning of the exchange and anisotropy, with pathways through which further scaling may be achieved. Driven by current-based spin torques from the heavy-metal overlayer, some of these antiferromagnetic textures could emerge as prime candidates for low-energy antiferromagnetic spintronics at room temperature
.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK, ZAGLJ
Data Analysis WorkbeNch (DAWN) Basham, Mark; Filik, Jacob; Wharmby, Michael T. ...
Journal of synchrotron radiation,
20/May , Volume:
22, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Synchrotron light source facilities worldwide generate terabytes of data in numerous incompatible data formats from a wide range of experiment types. The Data Analysis WorkbeNch (DAWN) was developed ...to address the challenge of providing a single visualization and analysis platform for data from any synchrotron experiment (including single‐crystal and powder diffraction, tomography and spectroscopy), whilst also being sufficiently extensible for new specific use case analysis environments to be incorporated (e.g. ARPES, PEEM). In this work, the history and current state of DAWN are presented, with two case studies to demonstrate specific functionality. The first is an example of a data processing and reduction problem using the generic tools, whilst the second shows how these tools can be targeted to a specific scientific area.
Full text
Available for:
FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Efficient manipulation of antiferromagnetic (AF) domains and domain walls has opened up new avenues of research towards ultrafast, high-density spintronic devices. AF domain structures are known to ...be sensitive to magnetoelastic effects, but the microscopic interplay of crystalline defects, strain and magnetic ordering remains largely unknown. Here, we reveal, using photoemission electron microscopy combined with scanning X-ray diffraction imaging and micromagnetic simulations, that the AF domain structure in CuMnAs thin films is dominated by nanoscale structural twin defects. We demonstrate that microtwin defects, which develop across the entire thickness of the film and terminate on the surface as characteristic lines, determine the location and orientation of 180
and 90
domain walls. The results emphasize the crucial role of nanoscale crystalline defects in determining the AF domains and domain walls, and provide a route to optimizing device performance.
Non-collinear spin textures in ferromagnetic ultrathin films are attracting a renewed interest fueled by possible fine engineering of several magnetic interactions, notably the interfacial ...Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. This allows for the stabilization of complex chiral spin textures such as chiral magnetic domain walls (DWs), spin spirals, and magnetic skyrmions among others. We report here on the behavior of chiral DWs at ultrashort timescale after optical pumping in perpendicularly magnetized asymmetric multilayers. The magnetization dynamics is probed using time-resolved circular dichroism in x-ray resonant magnetic scattering (CD-XRMS). We observe a picosecond transient reduction of the CD-XRMS, which is attributed to the spin current-induced coherent and incoherent torques within the continuously varying spin texture of the DWs. We argue that a specific demagnetization of the inner structure of the DW induces a flow of spins from the interior of the neighboring magnetic domains. We identify this time-varying change of the DW texture shortly after the laser pulse as a distortion of the homochiral Néel shape toward a transient mixed Bloch-Néel-Bloch texture along a direction transverse to the DW.
Magnetic skyrmions are chiral spin textures which hold great promise as nanoscale information carriers. Their recent observation at room temperature and their fast current-induced manipulation in ...multiple repetitions of heavy metal/ferromagnetic stacks have lifted an important bottleneck towards the practical realisation of skyrmion-based devices. However, the complex spin textures and large power dissipation in these multilayers limit their practical implementation as well as the fundamental understanding of the skyrmion dynamics. Here, we report on the current-driven motion of skyrmions in an ultrathin Pt/Co/MgO model system. We find that skyrmions with diameters in the 100 nm range can move at speeds up to 100 m.s−1−1^{-1}. Our experiments also reveal that the skyrmion Hall effect is markedly drive-dependent. These observations are well substantiated both by a simple analytical model and micromagnetic simulations, which highlight the important role of pinning in the skyrmion dynamics.
Full text
Available for:
CMK, CTK, FMFMET, IJS, NUK, PNG, UM
Abstract
Mott transitions in real materials are first order and almost always associated with lattice distortions, both features promoting the emergence of nanotextured phases. This nanoscale ...self-organization creates spatially inhomogeneous regions, which can host and protect transient non-thermal electronic and lattice states triggered by light excitation. Here, we combine time-resolved X-ray microscopy with a Landau-Ginzburg functional approach for calculating the strain and electronic real-space configurations. We investigate V
2
O
3
, the archetypal Mott insulator in which nanoscale self-organization already exists in the low-temperature monoclinic phase and strongly affects the transition towards the high-temperature corundum metallic phase. Our joint experimental-theoretical approach uncovers a remarkable out-of-equilibrium phenomenon: the photo-induced stabilisation of the long sought monoclinic metal phase, which is absent at equilibrium and in homogeneous materials, but emerges as a metastable state solely when light excitation is combined with the underlying nanotexture of the monoclinic lattice.
Emergent behaviors occur when simple interactions between a system's constituent elements produce properties that the individual elements do not exhibit in isolation. This article reports tunable ...emergent behaviors observed in domain wall (DW) populations of arrays of interconnected magnetic ring‐shaped nanowires under an applied rotating magnetic field. DWs interact stochastically at ring junctions to create mechanisms of DW population loss and gain. These combine to give a dynamic, field‐dependent equilibrium DW population that is a robust and emergent property of the array, despite highly varied local magnetic configurations. The magnetic ring arrays’ properties (e.g., non‐linear behavior, “fading memory” to changes in field, fabrication repeatability, and scalability) suggest they are an interesting candidate system for realizing reservoir computing (RC), a form of neuromorphic computing, in hardware. By way of example, simulations of ring arrays performing RC approaches 100% success in classifying spoken digits for single speakers.
Arrays of interconnected soft ferromagnetic nanorings contain mobile domain walls (DWs) that are driven around the rings by a rotating magnetic field. DWs have a probability of passing ring junctions, which leads to DW loss/gain mechanisms and, over the array, a stable DW equilibrium population. This emergent property is used to perform reservoir computing on a voice recognition task.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
High‐resolution magnetoelectric imaging is used to demonstrate electrical control of the perpendicular local magnetization associated with 125 nm‐wide magnetic stripe domains in 100‐nm‐thick Ni ...films. This magnetoelectric coupling is achieved in zero magnetic field using strain from ferroelectric BaTiO3 substrates to control perpendicular anisotropy imposed by the growth stress. These findings may be exploited for perpendicular recording in nanopatterned hybrid media.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The interest in understanding scaling limits of magnetic textures such as domain walls spans the entire field of magnetism from its physical fundamentals to applications in information technologies. ...Here, we explore antiferromagnetic CuMnAs in which imaging by x-ray photoemission reveals the presence of magnetic textures down to nanoscale, reaching the detection limit of this established microscopy in antiferromagnets. We achieve atomic resolution by using differential phase-contrast imaging within aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy. We identify abrupt domain walls in the antiferromagnetic film corresponding to the Néel order reversal between two neighboring atomic planes. Our work stimulates research of magnetic textures at the ultimate atomic scale and sheds light on electrical and ultrafast optical antiferromagnetic devices with magnetic field-insensitive neuromorphic functionalities.
PDF
