Bimeron clusters in chiral antiferromagnets

Xiaoguang Li,Yuhao Bai,Richard F L Evans,Xichao Zhang,Laichuan Shen,Roy W Chantrell,Oleg A Tretiakov,Jing Xia,Michal Mruczkiewicz,Junlin Wang,Motohiko Ezawa,Xiaohong Xu,Yongbing Xu,Yan Zhou,Maciej Krawczyk

doi:10.1038/s41524-020-00435-y

Abstract

A magnetic bimeron is an in-plane topological counterpart of a magnetic skyrmion. Despite the topological equivalence, their statics and dynamics could be distinct, making them attractive from the perspectives of both physics and spintronic applications. In this work, we demonstrate the stabilization of bimeron solitons and clusters in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) thin film with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI). Bimerons demonstrate high current-driven mobility as generic AFM solitons, while featuring anisotropic and relativistic dynamics excited by currents with in-plane and out-of-plane polarizations, respectively. Moreover, these spin textures can absorb other bimeron solitons or clusters along the translational direction to acquire a wide range of Néel topological numbers. The clustering involves the rearrangement of topological structures, and gives rise to remarkable changes in static and dynamical properties. The merits of AFM bimeron clusters reveal a potential path to unify multibit data creation, transmission, storage, and even topology-based computation within the same material system, and may stimulate spintronic devices enabling innovative paradigms of data manipulations.

Highlights

The last decade witnessed a rapid increase in our understanding about magnetic skyrmions[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The manipulation of AFM topological structures has lower power consumption, which is highly attractive from the point of view of practical applications
We demonstrate the stabilization of asymmetric bimeron solitons and clusters in AFM thin films with interfacial DMI40

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The last decade witnessed a rapid increase in our understanding about magnetic skyrmions[1,2,3,4,5,6,7] These spin textures are topologicallyprotected, and can be effectively manipulated by spin currents[8,9] or electric field[10,11], may serve as an ideal information carriers. The above characteristics envision a rich class of particle-like spin textures allowed by the in-plane AFM system, which can be manipulated by currents with high flexibility and efficiency. On these merits, AFM bimeron clusters may open the avenue for spintronic devices enabling innovative paradigm of data manipulations

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Li et al 3

METHODS

CODE AVAILABILITY