Atomic-scale Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya-modified Yoshimori spirals in Fe double layer on Ir(110)

Abstract

Ultrathin magnetic films on heavy metal substrates with strong spin-orbit coupling provide versatile platforms for exploring novel spin textures. So far, structurally open fcc(110) substrates remain largely terra incognita. Here, we stabilize a metastable, unreconstructed Ir(110)-$(1\times 1)$ surface supporting two layers of Fe. Combining spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy and ab initio calculations, we reveal a right-handed Néel-type spin spiral along the [$\overline{1}10$] crystallographic direction with a period of 1.27~nm as the magnetic ground state. Our analysis reveals this spiral is of the Yoshimori type, i.e., driven by frustrated Heisenberg interactions, with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction determining its cycloidal nature and handedness.

References in corpus (3)

• Additive interfacial chiral interaction in multilayers for stabilization of small individual skyrmion at room temperature
• Stabilization and current-induced motion of antiskyrmion in the presence of anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
• Dynamics of an elliptical ferromagnetic skyrmion driven by the spin-orbit torque

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Hydrogen toggling between Yoshimori spin spirals and elliptical Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya skyrmions in Fe on Ir(110)