Imaging the ultrafast coherent control of a skyrmion crystal

Abstract

Exotic magnetic textures emerging from the subtle interplay between thermodynamic and topological fluctuation have attracted intense interest due to their potential applications in spintronic devices. Recent advances in electron microscopy have enabled the imaging of random photo-generated individual skyrmions. However, their deterministic and dynamical manipulation is hampered by the chaotic nature of such fluctuations and the intrinsically irreversible switching between different minima in the magnetic energy landscape. Here, we demonstrate a method to coherently control the rotation of a skyrmion crystal by discrete amounts at speeds which are much faster than previously observed. By employing circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses with an energy below the bandgap of the Mott insulator Cu2OSeO3, we excite a collective magnon mode via the inverse Faraday effect. This triggers coherent magnetic oscillations that directly control the rotation of a skyrmion crystal imaged by cryo-Lorentz Transmission Electron Microscopy. The manipulation of topological order via ultrafast laser pulses shown here can be used to engineer fast spin-based logical devices.

References in corpus (8)

• Skyrmion Hall Effect Revealed by Direct Time-Resolved X-Ray Microscopy
• Thermally Driven Ratchet Motion of Skyrmion Microcrystal and Topological Magnon Hall Effect
• Magnon-skyrmion scattering in chiral magnets
• Electric field-induced Skyrmion distortion and giant lattice rotation in the magnetoelectric insulator Cu2OSeO3
• Picosecond spin Seebeck effect
• A light induced metastable magnetic texture uncovered by in-situ Lorentz microscopy
• Low spin wave damping in the insulating chiral magnet Cu${}_2$OSeO${}_3$
• Ballistic magnon heat conduction and possible Poiseuille flow in the helimagnetic insulator Cu${}_2$OSeO${}_3$

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• Skyrmion Jellyfish in Driven Chiral Magnets
• Propelling Ferrimagnetic Domain Walls by Dynamical Frustration
• Skyrmion Lattice Manipulation with Electric Currents and Thermal Gradients in MnSi
• A set-up for Hard X-ray Time-resolved Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering at SwissFEL
• High-resolution MHz time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy based on a tunable vacuum ultraviolet source
• Shot-to-shot acquisition ultrafast electron diffraction