Interfacial magnetic anisotropy from a 3-dimensional Rashba substrate

Abstract

We study the magnetic anisotropy which arises at the interface between a thin film ferromagnet and a 3-d Rashba material. The 3-d Rashba material is characterized by the spin-orbit strength $\alpha$ and the direction of broken bulk inversion symmetry $\hat{n}$. We find an in-plane uniaxial anisotropy in the $\hat{z}\times \hat{n}$ direction, where $\hat{z}$ is the interface normal. For realistic values of $\alpha$, the uniaxial anisotropy is of a similar order of magnitude as the bulk magnetocrystalline anisotropy. Evaluating the uniaxial anisotropy for a simplified model in 1-d shows that for small band filling, the in-plane easy axis anisotropy scales as ${\alpha }^4$ and results from a twisted exchange interaction between the spins in the 3-d Rashba material and the ferromagnet. For a ferroelectric 3-d Rashba material, $\hat{n}$ can be controlled with an electric field, and we propose that the interfacial magnetic anisotropy could provide a mechanism for electrical control of the magnetic orientation.

4+ pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Surface Magnetoelectric Effect in Ferromagnetic Metal Films
• Class of Rashba ferroelectrics in hexagonal semiconductors
• Microscopic Theory of Rashba Interaction in Magnetic Metal

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Current-Induced Torques with Dresselhaus Symmetry Due to Resistance Anisotropy in 2D Materials