Deriving the skyrmion Hall angle from skyrmion lattice dynamics

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-22857-y

Authors: Richard Brearton (University of Oxford; Diamond Light Source) , L. A. Turnbull (Durham University) , J. A. T. Verezhak (University of Warwick) , G. Balakrishnan (University of Warwick) , P. D. Hatton (Durham University) , G. Van Der Laan (Diamond Light Source) , T. Hesjedal (University of Oxford)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Nature Communications , VOL 12

State: Published (Approved)
Published: May 2021
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 23784 , 23451

Abstract: Magnetic skyrmions are topologically non-trivial, swirling magnetization textures that form lattices in helimagnetic materials. These magnetic nanoparticles show promise as high efficiency next-generation information carriers, with dynamics that are governed by their topology. Among the many unusual properties of skyrmions is the tendency of their direction of motion to deviate from that of a driving force; the angle by which they diverge is a materials constant, known as the skyrmion Hall angle. In magnetic multilayer systems, where skyrmions often appear individually, not arranging themselves in a lattice, this deflection angle can be easily measured by tracing the real space motion of individual skyrmions. Here we describe a reciprocal space technique which can be used to determine the skyrmion Hall angle in the skyrmion lattice state, leveraging the properties of the skyrmion lattice under a shear drive. We demonstrate this procedure to yield a quantitative measurement of the skyrmion Hall angle in the room-temperature skyrmion system FeGe, shearing the skyrmion lattice with the magnetic field gradient generated by a single turn Oersted wire.

Diamond Keywords: Skyrmions

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics


Instruments: I10-Beamline for Advanced Dichroism - scattering

Added On: 14/05/2021 09:32

Documents:
s41467-021-22857-y.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Physics Hard condensed matter - structures Magnetism Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Elastic X-ray Scattering (REXS)