Direct imaging of a zero-field target skyrmion and its polarity switch in a chiral magnetic nanodisk
arXiv:1706.06923 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.197205
Abstract
A target skyrmion is a flux-closed spin texture that has two-fold degeneracy and is promising as a binary state in next generation universal memories. Although its formation in nanopatterned chiral magnets has been predicted, its observation has remained challenging. Here, we use off-axis electron holography to record images of target skyrmions in a 160-nm-diameter nanodisk of the chiral magnet FeGe. We compare experimental measurements with numerical simulations, demonstrate switching between two stable degenerate target skyrmion ground states that have opposite polarities and rotation senses and discuss the observed switching mechanism.
18 pages, 4 figures
References in corpus (5)
- A new class of chiral materials hosting magnetic skyrmions beyond room temperature
- Magnetic Vortex Core Reversal by Excitation of Spin Waves
- Three-dimensional skyrmion states in thin films of cubic helimagnets
- Field-Driven Evolution of Chiral Spin Textures in Thin Nanodisk of the Helimagnets
- Spintronics via non-axisymmetric chiral skyrmions