Importance of the Ferromagnetic Moment Induced by Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in a Canted Antiferromagnet for Electrical and Magnetic Field Control of the Néel Order

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In this work, we study the canted antiferromagnet α-Fe2O3. At room temperature, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) induces canting of the two magnetic sublattices MA and MB giving rise to a weak ferromagnetic (FM) moment m. We employ spin Hall magnetoresistance (SMR) measurements to study electrical and magnetic field control of the Néel order in α-Fe2O3/Pt bilayers. The angle-dependent magnetoresistance (ADMR) shows the characteristic saturated negative SMR signal of AFMs (red curve in figure 1) agreeing with previous findings1–4. We note that the FM moment lifts the degeneracy of the sublattices and consequently the orientation of the Néel vector with respect to the applied magnetic field. The blue curve in figure 1 shows the remanent resistance as a function of the angle of the preceding saturating magnetic field. The data shows a simple scaling between the saturated ADMR signal and the remanent resistance. The lack of signatures of anisotropy in the remanent signal implies that the relaxation of the SMR signal is dominated by destressing effects favoring an equilibrium state with multiple domains distributing the orientation of the Néel vector along different directions. Applying the insights from investigating the remanence of α-Fe2O3 with an external magnetic field on our current-induced switching experiments, we find that the fundamental limit of the switching efficiency is given by the magnitude of the remanence Furthermore, we observe hysteresis in the SMR signal. The irreversibility upon switching the direction of the magnetic field in combination with investigating the transient effects of current-induced changes in the domain structure allows us to study the nature and formation of domain walls at low magnetic fields. Our work emphasizes the importance of the FM moment induced by DMI and the relaxation effects for the equilibrium domain structure in α-Fe2O3.