Abstract
Electric field control of magnetic structures, particularly topological defects in magnetoelectric materials, draws a great attention, which has led to experimental success in creation and manipulation of single magnetic defects, such as skyrmions and domain walls. In this work we explore a scenario of electric field creation of another type of topological defects – magnetic vortices and antivortices. Because of interaction of magnetic and electric subsystems each magnetic vortex (antivortex) in magnetoelectric materials possesses quantized magnetic charge, responsible for interaction between vortices, and electric charge that couples them to electric field. This property of magnetic vortices makes possible their creation by electric fields. We show that the electric field, created by a cantilever tip, produces a “magnetic atom” with a localized spot of ordered vortices (“nucleus” of the atom) surrounded by antivortices (“electronic shells”). We analytically find the vortex density distribution profile and temperature dependence of polarizability of this structure and confirm it numerically by Monte Carlo simulation.
Highlights
Electric field control of magnetization and magnetic topological defects is very promising for creation of new types of magnetic memory devices
The use of domain walls and other topological defects in multiferroics [2] for magnetic storage are very promising since they provide a mechanism of very dense packing of information, while topological nature protects information from loss under the influence of external perturbations such as heating or mechanical action
We show both analytically and numerically that in this case a strong enough locally concentrated electric field may cause formation of a “magnetic atom” that consists of a vortex “nucleus” surrounded by antivortex “shells”
Summary
Electric field control of magnetization and magnetic topological defects is very promising for creation of new types of magnetic memory devices. Magnetoelectric materials, such as type-II multiferroics [1] are appealing for this purpose. We consider theoretically a phenomenological model developed by Mostovoy [10] for a type-II multiferroics and apply it to a thin-film material with easy-plane symmetry We show both analytically and numerically that in this case a strong enough locally concentrated electric field may cause formation of a “magnetic atom” that consists of a vortex “nucleus” surrounded by antivortex “shells”. This idea allows us to propose an experimental realization for 2D Coulomb plasma in a trap and make predictions about its electric polarizability
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