Abstract
Chiral spin textures of a ferromagnetic layer in contact to a heavy non-magnetic metal, such as Néel-type domain walls and skyrmions, have been studied intensively because of their potential for future nanomagnetic devices. The Dyzaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) is an essential phenomenon for the formation of such chiral spin textures. In spite of recent theoretical progress aiming at understanding the microscopic origin of the DMI, an experimental investigation unravelling the physics at stake is still required. Here we experimentally demonstrate the close correlation of the DMI with the anisotropy of the orbital magnetic moment and with the magnetic dipole moment of the ferromagnetic metal in addition to Heisenberg exchange. The density functional theory and the tight-binding model calculations reveal that inversion symmetry breaking with spin–orbit coupling gives rise to the orbital-related correlation. Our study provides the experimental connection between the orbital physics and the spin–orbit-related phenomena, such as DMI.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 25 2018 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: We also thank H.-W. Lee for fruitful discussion about the relation between the orbital magnetism and the DMI. This work was partly supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Numbers 15H05702, 26870300, 26870304, 26103002 and 25220604; JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship program (Grant Number 2604316, P16314); Collaborative Research Program of the Institute for Chemical Research, Kyoto University; R & D project for ICT Key Technology of MEXT from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Cooperative Research Project Program of the Research Institute of Electrical Communication, Tohoku University. This work has also been performed with the approval of the SPring-8 Program Advisory Committee (Proposal Nos. 2015A0117, 2015A0125). A.M. and A.B. acknowledge support from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and fruitful discussiojns with S. Blügel and G. Bihlmayer. G.G., P.-H.J. and K.-J.L. also acknowledge support from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2015M3D1A1070465, 2017R1A2B2006119). K.-J.K. was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea Government (MSIP) (Nos. 2017R1C1B2009686, NRF-2016R1A5A1008184) and by the DGIST R&D Program of the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (17-BT-02). S.K. was supported by Priority Research Centers Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (2009-0093818).