Interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction arising from rare-earth orbital magnetism in insulating magnetic oxides

Lucas Caretta, Ethan Rosenberg, Felix Büttner, Takian Fakhrul, Pierluigi Gargiani, Manuel Valvidares, Zhen Chen, Pooja Reddy, David A. Muller, Caroline A. Ross and Geoffrey S. D. Beach ()
Additional contact information
Lucas Caretta: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ethan Rosenberg: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Felix Büttner: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Takian Fakhrul: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Pierluigi Gargiani: ALBA Synchrotron Light Source
Manuel Valvidares: ALBA Synchrotron Light Source
Zhen Chen: Cornell University
Pooja Reddy: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David A. Muller: Cornell University
Caroline A. Ross: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Geoffrey S. D. Beach: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract The Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is responsible for exotic chiral and topological magnetic states such as spin spirals and skyrmions. DMI manifests at metallic ferromagnet/heavy-metal interfaces, owing to inversion symmetry breaking and spin-orbit coupling by a heavy metal such as Pt. Moreover, in centrosymmetric magnetic oxides interfaced by Pt, DMI-driven topological spin textures and fast current-driven dynamics have been reported, though the origin of this DMI is unclear. While in metallic systems, spin-orbit coupling arises from a proximate heavy metal, we show that in perpendicularly-magnetized iron garnets, rare-earth orbital magnetism gives rise to an intrinsic spin-orbit coupling generating interfacial DMI at mirror symmetry-breaking interfaces. We show that rare-earth ion substitution and strain engineering can significantly alter the DMI. These results provide critical insights into the origins of chiral magnetism in low-damping magnetic oxides and identify paths toward engineering chiral and topological states in centrosymmetric oxides through rare-earth ion substitution.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14924-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-14924-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14924-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().