2012/07/01 by Jan-Philipp Hanke, Frank Freimuth, Chengwang Niu +3 · 3 citations
Decision Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Business #Business and Management Studies #Chemical and Physical Properties of Materials #Coupling (piping) #Economics #Ferromagnetism #Humanities #Magnetic field #Magnetic properties of thin films #Magnetization #Philosophy #Political science #Spintronics #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Topological insulator #Topology (electrical circuits) #Torque #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-017-01138-7
published as Nature Communications 8, 1479 (2017) · 9 pages (7 pages + 2 pages supplementary material)
openalex publication_date 2012/07/01 · arxiv created 2017/04/27 · arxiv updated 2017/11/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
Reliable and energy-efficient magnetization switching by electrically induced spin-orbit torques is of crucial technological relevance for spintronic devices implementing memory and logic functionality. Here we predict that the strength of spin-orbit torques and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in topologically nontrivial magnetic insulators can exceed by far that of conventional metals. In analogy to the quantum anomalous Hall effect, we explain this extraordinary response in the absence of longitudinal currents as hallmark of monopoles in the electronic structure of systems that are interpreted most naturally within the framework of mixed Weyl semimetals. We thereby launch the effect of spin-orbit torque into the field of topology and reveal its crucial role in mediating the topological phase transitions arising from the complex interplay between magnetization direction and momentum-space topology. The presented concepts may be exploited to understand and utilize magnetoelectric coupling phenomena in insulating ferromagnets and antiferromagnets.