Abstract
The effect of the magnetic skyrmion texture on the electronic transport properties of the TI surface state coupled to a thin-film FM is numerically investigated. It is shown that both Bloch (vortex) and Néel (hedgehog) skyrmion textures induce additional scattering on top of a homogeneous background FM texture which can modify the conductance of the system. The change in conductance depends on several factors including the skyrmion size, the dimensions of the FM and the exchange interaction strength. For the Néel skyrmion, the result of the interaction strongly depends on the skyrmion number Nsk and the skyrmion helicity h. For both skyrmion types, significant change of the resistance can be achieved, which is in the order of kΩ.
Highlights
To this end, control of the skyrmion state is required
For our electrical skyrmion detector, we are going to use as reference conductance GR, the one corresponding to a trivial FM texture without any skyrmion present, where the magnetization is uniform and in the positive zdirection
M(r) = zand the interaction term in Eq (1) reduces to JSσz allowing us to find analytical solutions. This additional term opens a gap in the Dirac cone at the Γ point. Because this gap closes again in the free topological insulators (TI) regions, which we regard as contact regions, the trivial texture is in essence a constant energy barrier for electrons
Summary
Control of the skyrmion state is required. skyrmion-based devices would require efficient skyrmion creation and annihilation as well as efficient read-out of the skyrmion presence or absence. While the out-of-plane electronic current techniques take advantage of the spin-mixing magnetoresistance[24,27,28] to identify the skyrmion presence, the in-plane current techniques[25,26] employ the emergent magnetic field of the skyrmion This emergent field is attributed to the non-trivial real-space Berry curvature that the conduction electrons feel, leading to the Topological Hall Effect (THE)[29]. We combine the non-trivial skyrmion magnetization with a material that has brought a lot of attention in the spintronics community, namely topological insulators (TI)[30,31,32] These are materials which insulate in the bulk, but provide conducting edge (2D TIs) and surface (3D TIs) modes, which are spin-polarized. The in-plane components do not modify the energy gap, their specific texture can significantly alter the system conductance due to the specific spin-momentum locking mechanism of the TI surface
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