Slow equilibrium relaxation in a chiral magnet mediated by topological defects

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.133.166707

Authors: Chenhao Zhang (ShanghaiTech University) , Yang Wu (ShanghaiTech University) , Jingyi Chen (ShanghaiTech University) , Haonan Jin (ShanghaiTech University) , Jinghui Wang (ShanghaiTech University) , Raymond Fan (Diamond Light Source) , Paul Steadman (Diamond Light Source) , Gerrit Van Der Laan (Diamond Light Source) , Thorsten Hesjedal (University of Oxford) , Shilei Zhang (ShanghaiTech University)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Physical Review Letters , VOL 133

State: Published (Approved)
Published: October 2024
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 34423 , 34827

Abstract: We performed a pump-probe experiment on the chiral magnet Cu2⁢OSeO3 to study the relaxation dynamics of its noncollinear magnetic orders, employing a millisecond magnetic field pulse as the pump and resonant elastic x-ray scattering as the probe. Our findings reveal that the system requires ∼0.2  s to stabilize after the perturbation applied to both the conical and skyrmion lattice phase, which is significantly slower than the typical nanosecond timescale observed in micromagnetics. This prolonged relaxation is attributed to the formation and slow dissipation of local topological defects, such as emergent monopoles. By unveiling the experimental lifetime of these emergent singularities in a noncollinear magnetic system, our study highlights a universal relaxation mechanism in solitonic textures within the slow dynamics regime, offering new insights into topological physics and advanced information storage solutions.

Journal Keywords: Magnetism; Skyrmions; Chiral magnets; Resonant elastic x-ray scattering

Diamond Keywords: Skyrmions; Data Storage; Spintronics

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics, Information and Communication Technology


Instruments: I10-Beamline for Advanced Dichroism - scattering

Added On: 23/10/2024 09:39

Discipline Tags:

Quantum Materials Physics Hard condensed matter - structures Electronics Components & Micro-systems Information & Communication Technologies Magnetism Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Elastic X-ray Scattering (REXS)