2021/05/10 by Cyril Léveillé, Samuel Flewett, Erick Burgos-Parra +6
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemistry #Chirality (physics) #Circular dichroism #Condensed matter physics #Crystallography #Dipole #Ferromagnetism #Magnetic Properties and Applications #Magnetic field #Magnetic properties of thin films #Magnetization #Materials science #Optics #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum mechanics #Scattering #Skyrmion #Spin (aerodynamics) #Spontaneous symmetry breaking #Symmetry breaking #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.104.l060402
published as Phys. Rev. B 104, 060402 (2021)
arxiv created 2021/05/10 · openalex publication_date 2021/05/10 · openalex created_date 2021/08/16 · arxiv updated 2021/08/18 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Noncollinear chiral spin textures in ferromagnetic multilayers are at the forefront of recent research in nano-magnetism with the promise for fast and energy-efficient devices. The recently demonstrated possibilities to stabilize such chiral structures in synthetic antiferromagnets (SAF) has raised interests as they are immune to dipolar field, hence favoring the stabilization of ultra small textures, improve mobility and avoid the transverse deflections of moving skyrmions limiting the efficiency in some foreseen applications. However, such systems with zero net magnetization are hence difficult to characterize by most of the standard techniques. Here, we report that the relevant parameters of a magnetic SAF texture, those being its period, its type (N'eel or Bloch) and its chirality (clockwise or counterclockwise), can be directly determined using the circular dichroism in x-ray resonant scattering (CD-XRMS) at half integer multilayer Bragg peaks in reciprocal space. The analysis of the dependence in temperature down to 40K allows us moreover to address the question of the temperature stability of a spin spiral in a SAF sample and of the temperature scaling of the symmetric and antisymmetric exchange interactions.