Skyrmions In Magnetic Films Research Articles

Monte Carlo Simulation of Magnetic Skyrmions in Ferromagnetic Films

Magnetic films, in which magnetic vortex textures - skyrmions appear because of competition between the direct Heisenberg exchange and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, were studied using the Monte-Carlo simulation technique. The conditions for the nucleation and stable existence of magnetic skyrmions in magnetic films in the frame of the classical Heisenberg model were considered in the paper. The process of nucleation of skyrmions with increasing of the external magnetic field was studied, various phases into which the Heisenberg spin system passes were recognized. A phase diagram was plotted: it shows the behavior of the system at the constant value of temperature depending on values of an external magnetic field and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction.

Kerr effect anomaly in magnetic topological insulator superlattices

We report the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) study of magnetic topological insulator superlattice films with alternating transition-metal and rare-earth doping. We observe an unexpected hump in the MOKE hysteresis loops upon magnetization reversal at low temperatures, reminiscent of the topological Hall effect (THE) reported in transport measurements. The THE is commonly associated with the existence of magnetic skyrmions, i.e. chiral spin textures originating from topological defects in real space. Here, the observation of the effect is tied to ferromagnetic ordering in the rare-earth-doped layers of the superlattice. Our study may provide a new approach for the non-invasive optical investigation of skyrmions in magnetic films, complementary to electrical transport measurements, where the topological Hall signal is often the only hint of non-trivial magnetization patterns.