Surface twist instabilities and skyrmion states in chiral ferromagnets

Abstract

In epitaxial MnSi/Si(111) films, the in-plane magnetization saturation is never reached due to the formation of specific surface chiral modulations with the propagation direction perpendicular to the film surfaces [Wilson et al. Phys. Rev. B 88, 214420 (2013)]. In this paper we show that the occurrence of such chiral surface twists is a general effect attributed to all bulk and con- fined magnetic crystals lacking inversion symmetry. We present experimental investigations of this phenomenon in nanolayers of MnSi/Si(111) supported by detailed theoretical analysis within the standard phenomenological model. In magnetic nanolayers with intrinsic or induced chirality, such surface induced instabilities become sizeable effects and play a crucial role in the formation of skyrmion lattices and other nontrivial chiral modulations.

References in corpus (4)

• Formation and rotation of skyrmion crystal in the chiral-lattice insulator Cu2OSeO3
• Three-dimensional skyrmion states in thin films of cubic helimagnets
• Extended elliptic skyrmion gratings in epitaxial MnSi thin films
• Complex itinerant ferromagnetism in noncentrosymmetric Cr11Ge19

Cited by in corpus (23)

• Skyrmions in Magnetic Multilayers
• Electrical Probing of Field-Driven Cascading Quantized Transitions of Skyrmion Cluster States in MnSi Nanowires
• Creation of a Chiral Bobber Lattice in Helimagnet-Multilayer Heterostructures
• Spintronics via non-axisymmetric chiral skyrmions
• Neutron study of in-plane skyrmions in MnSi thin films
• Boundary-Driven Twist States in Systems with Broken Spatial Inversion Symmetry
• Theory of standing spin waves in finite-size chiral spin soliton lattice
• Topological Hybrids of Magnons and Magnon Bound Pairs
• Twists in Ferromagnetic Monolayers With Trigonal Prismatic Symmetry
• Field-driven skyrmion motion through velocity equipartition between skyrmions and a domain wall
• Chiral standing spin waves in skyrmion lattice
• Dynamics of interacting skyrmions in magnetic nano-track
• Imaging magnetic spiral phases, skyrmion clusters, and skyrmion displacements at the surface of bulk Cu${}_2$OSeO${}_3$
• Boundary conditions for the Néel order parameter in a chiral antiferromagnetic slab
• Regular and in-plane skyrmions and antiskyrmions from boundary instabilities
• Surface barrier effect as evidence of chiral soliton lattice formation in chiral dichalcogenide CrTa${}_3$S${}_6$ crystals
• Skyrmions and antiskyrmions in monoaxial chiral magnets
• Tailoring energy barriers of Bloch-point-mediated transitions between topological spin textures
• Emergent electric field from magnetic resonances in a one-dimensional chiral magnet
• X-ray holographic imaging of magnetic surface spirals in FeGe lamellae
• Lifetime of racetrack skyrmions
• Phase-Factor-Controlled Surface Spirals in the Magnetic Conical Phase: The Role of In-Plane Directionality
• Structure and magnetism of MnGe thin films grown with a nonmagnetic CrSi template