Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 63: Symposium on Frontiers of Electronic Structure Theory: Focus on Topology and Transport

MM 63.5: Invited Talk

Friday, March 11, 2016, 11:45–12:15, H1

Skyrmions – Topological magnetization solitons for future spintronics — •Stefan Blügel — Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA, D-52425 Jülich, Germany

Ultrathin magnetic films and heterostructures provide a fantastic playground for the stabilization, manipulation and usage of chiral magnetic skyrmions – topological magnetization solitons – magnetic entities described by a micromagnetic energy functional with particle like properties that may open a new vista for spintronics. A crucial quantity for the chiral skyrmion formation is the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), whose presence in thin films could be established in a concerted effort of first-principles theory and spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy. It could be shown that the spin-orbit interaction and the structure inversion-asymmetry in these systems result in a DMI that is strong enough to give rise to one- and two-dimensional lattices of chiral spin-textures, chiral domain walls and even single skyrmions. In retrospect, it is surprising how little is known about the DMI in these metallic systems. In this talk I give insight into the DMI, relating first-principles calculations to different models, discussing the transport properties of electrons e.g. the topological (THE) and anomalous (AHE) Hall effect in relation to the spin texture of a skyrmion, and discuss possibilities to tailor the magnetic interactions to enlarge the materials base to stabilize single skyrmions. – I acknowledge fruitful collaborations with D. Crum, J. Bouaziz, B. Dupé, S. Heinze, N. Kiselev, S. Lounis, Y. Mokrousov, A. Nandy, and B. Zimmermann.