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KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur
KFM 15: Multiferroics and Magnetoelectric Coupling (joint session MA/KFM)
KFM 15.4: Talk
Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 15:45–16:00, EB 407
Electric field-driven dynamics of meron domain walls in spin spiral multiferroics — •Luca Maranzana1,2 and Sergey Artyukhin1 — 1Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy — 2University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy
Spin spiral multiferroics exhibit strong coupling between magnetic and ferroelectric orders, allowing cross-control. Since their discovery by Kimura et al. in 2003, these materials have attracted great interest galvanized by the prospect of new high-efficiency information storage devices, where the magnetic bits are switched through an external electric field. Nevertheless, the electric field-driven dynamics of domain walls in spin spiral multiferroics (i.e. the mechanism underlying this switching) is still poorly understood. Here, we address this problem for meron domain walls, which arise at low anisotropy and consist of a periodic chain of merons (half-skyrmions). The topological charge lies at the heart of the dynamics and can be controlled by modifying the meron configuration or applying an external magnetic field. Domain walls with zero total topological charge present a low-field dynamics reminiscent of a massive particle in one dimension. In contrast, those with non-zero total topological charge evince a peculiar nonlocal dynamics where all the spins in the system rotate and the mobility is drastically reduced.
Keywords: Multiferroics; Spiral magnets; Domain walls; Magnetization dynamics; Merons