Understanding current-driven dynamics of magnetic Néel walls in heavy metal/ferromagnetic metal/oxide trilayers

Abstract

We consider analytically current-driven dynamics of magnetic Néel walls in heavy metal/ferromagnetic metal/oxide trilayers where strong spin-orbit coupling and interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (i-DMI) coexist. We show that field-like spin-orbit torque (FL-SOT) with effective field along $\mathbf{n}\times \hat{\mathbf{J}}$ ($\mathbf{n}$ being the interface normal and $\hat{\mathbf{J}}$ being the charge current direction) and i-DMI induced torque can both lead to Walker breakdown suppression meanwhile leaving the wall mobility (velocity versus current density) unchanged. However, i-DMI itself can not induce the "universal absence of Walker breakdown" (UAWB) while FL-SOT exceeding a certain threshold can. Finitely-enlarged Walker limits before UAWB are theoretically calculated and well explain existing data. In addition, change in wall mobility and even its sign-inversion can be understood only if the anti-damping-like (ADL) SOT is appended. For Néel walls in ferromagnetic-metal layer with both perpendicular and in-plane anisotropies, we have calculated the respective modifications of wall mobility under the coexistence of spin-transfer torque, SOTs and i-DMI. Analytics shows that in trilayers with perpendicular anisotropy strong enough spin Hall angle and appropriate sign of i-DMI parameter can lead to sign-inversion in wall mobility even under small enough current density, while in those with in-plane anisotropy this only occurs for current density in a specific range.

22 pages, 4 figure