2017/01/11 by Patrick M. Buhl, Frank Freimuth, Stefan Blügel +1 · 61 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Antiferromagnetism #Ferromagnetism #Hall effect #Magnetic properties of thin films #Multiferroics and related materials #Semiclassical physics #Sign (mathematics) #Skyrmion #Spin (aerodynamics) #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/pssr.201700007
published in physica status solidi (RRL) - Rapid Research Letters 11(4) (Wiley)
arxiv created 2017/01/11 · openalex publication_date 2017/02/17 · openalex created_date 2017/02/24 · arxiv updated 2017/05/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The topological Hall effect (THE), as one of the primary manifestations of non‐trivial topology of chiral skyrmions, is traditionally used to detect the emergence of skyrmion lattices with locally ferromagnetic order. In this work we demonstrate that the appearance of non‐trivial two‐dimensional chiral textures with locally anti ‐ferromagnetic order can be detected through the spin version of the THE – the topological spin Hall effect (TSHE). Utilizing the semiclassical formalism, here used to combine chiral antiferromagnetic textures with a density functional theory description of the collinear, degenerate electronic structure, we follow the real‐space real‐time evolution of electronic SU(2) wavepackets in an external electric field to demonstrate the emergence of sizeable transverse pure spin current in synthetic antiferromagnets of the Fe/Cu/Fe trilayer type. We further unravel the extreme sensitivity of the TSHE to the details of the electronic structure, suggesting that the magnitude and sign of the TSHE in transition‐metal synthetic antiferromagnets can be engineered by tuning such parameters as the thickness or band filling. Besides being an important step in our understanding of the topological properties of ever more complex skyrmionic systems, our results bear great potential in stimulating the discovery of antiferromagnetic skyrmions.