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Chiral damping of magnetic domain walls
Structural symmetry breaking in magnetic materials is responsible for a
variety of outstanding physical phenomena. Examples range from the existence of
multiferroics, to current induced spin orbit torques (SOT) and the formation of
topological magnetic structures. In this letter we bring into light a novel
effect of the structural inversion asymmetry (SIA): a chiral damping mechanism.
This phenomenon is evidenced by measuring the field driven domain wall (DW)
motion in perpendicularly magnetized asymmetric Pt/Co/Pt trilayers. The
difficulty in evidencing the chiral damping is that the ensuing DW dynamics
exhibit identical spatial symmetry to those expected from the
Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). Despite this fundamental resemblance,
the two scenarios are differentiated by their time reversal properties: while
DMI is a conservative effect that can be modeled by an effective field, the
chiral damping is purely dissipative and has no influence on the equilibrium
magnetic texture. When the DW motion is modulated by an in-plane magnetic
field, it reveals the structure of the internal fields experienced by the DWs,
allowing to distinguish the physical mechanism. The observation of the chiral
damping, not only enriches the spectrum of physical phenomena engendered by the
SIA, but since it can coexists with DMI it is essential for conceiving DW and
skyrmion devices
Index to NASA Tech Briefs, 1975
This index contains abstracts and four indexes--subject, personal author, originating Center, and Tech Brief number--for 1975 Tech Briefs
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