We study current-induced domain-wall dynamics in a thin ferromagnetic nanowire. The domain-wall dynamics is described by simple equations with four parameters. We propose the procedure to determine these parameters by all-electric measurements of the time-dependent voltage induced by the domain-wall motion. We provide an analytical expression for the time variation of this voltage. Furthermore, we show that the measurement of the proposed effects is within reach with current experimental techniques.
We propose a method to all-electrically control a domain-wall position in a ferromagnetic nanowire with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. The strength of this interaction can be controlled by an external electric field, which in turn allows a fine tuning of the pinning potential of a spin-spiral domain wall. It allows to create more mobile pinning sites and can also be advantageous for ultra-low power electronics.
Magnetization dynamics driven by an electric field could provide long-term benefits to information technologies because of its ultralow power consumption. Meanwhile, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in interfacially asymmetric multilayers consisting of ferromagnetic and heavy-metal layers can stabilize topological spin textures, such as chiral domain walls, skyrmions, and skyrmion bubbles. These topological spin textures can be controlled by an electric field, and hold promise for building advanced spintronic devices. Here, we present an experimental and numerical study on the electric fi…
We discover that the way spin-waves exert magnetic torques in multiferroic materials can cause not only domain wall motion, but also magnetization dynamics for homogeneous magnetization textures. Interestingly, the domain wall motion can be controlled via purely electrical means with the spin-waves being generated by an ac electric field $E$ while the direction of the wall motion also is sensitive to an applied dc $E$ field. Moreover, we determine the interaction between spin-transfer torque from an electric current and a magnetic domain wall in multiferroics and show that the Walker breakdown…
We explore universal behaviors of magnetic domain wall driven by the spin-transfer of an electrical current, in a ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)(As,P) thin film with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. For a current direction transverse to domain wall, the dynamics of the thermally activated creep regime and the depinning transition are found to be compatible with a self-consistent universal description of magnetic field induced domain wall dynamics. This common universal behavior, characteristic of the so-called quenched Edwards-Wilkinson universality class, is confirmed by a complementary and independ…
We consider theoretically the effect of an inhomogeneous magnetoelectric coupling on the magnon-induced dynamics of a ferromagnet. The magnon-mediated magnetoelectric torque affects both the homogeneous magnetization and magnon-driven domain wall motion. In the domains, we predict a reorientation of the magnetization, controllable by the applied electric field, which is almost an order of magnitude larger than that observed in other physical systems via the same mechanism. The applied electric field can also be used to tune the domain wall speed and direction of motion in a linear fashion, pro…
We theoretically study the equilibrium and dynamic properties of nanoscale magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) and magnetic wires, in which an electric field controls the magnetic anisotropy through spin-orbit coupling. By performing micromagnetic simulations, we construct a rich phase diagram and find that, in particular, the equilibrium magnetic textures can be tuned between Neel and Bloch domain walls in an elliptical MTJ. Furthermore, we develop a phenomenological model of a quasi-one-dimensional domain wall confined by a parabolic potential and show that, near the Neel-to-Bloch-wall transiti…
We present fractional quantum Hall domain walls confined in a gate-defined wire structure. Our experiments utilize spatial oscillation of domain walls driven by radio frequency electric fields to cause nuclear magnetic resonance. The resulting spectra are discussed in terms of both large quadrupole fields created around the wire and hyperfine fields associated with the oscillating domain walls. This provides the experimental fact that the domain walls survive near the confined geometry despite of potential deformation, by which a localized magnetic resonance is allowed in electrical means.
We theoretically study domain wall motion induced by an electric field in the quantum anomalous Hall states on a two-dimensional Kagome lattice with ferromagnetic order and spin-orbit coupling. We show that an electric charge is accumulated near the domain wall which indicates that the electric field drives both the accumulated charge and the domain wall with small energy dissipation. Using the linear response theory we compute the non-equilibrium spin density which exerts a non-adiabatic spin transfer torque on textures of the local magnetization. This torque emerges even when the bulk is ins…
Recent studies demonstrate that an individual magnetic domain wall (DW) can be trapped and reproducibly positioned within multiterminal (Ga,Mn)As microdevices. The electrical resistance obtained from such measurements is found to be measurably altered by the presence of this single entity. To elucidate these observations we develop a simple model for the electrical potential distribution along a multiterminal device in the presence of a single DW. This is employed to calculate the effect of a single DW upon the longitudinal and transverse resistance. The model provides very good agreement with…
Recent magnetoconductance measurements performed on magnetic topological insulator candidates have revealed butterfly-shaped hysteresis. This hysteresis has been attributed to the formation of gapless chiral domain-wall bound states during a magnetic field sweep. We treat this phenomenon theoretically, providing a link between microscopic magnetization dynamics and butterfly hysteresis in magnetoconductance. Further, we illustrate how a spatially resolved conductance measurement can probe the most striking feature of the domain-wall bound states: their chirality. This work establishes a regime…
We present a theory of the current-voltage characteristics of a magnetic domain wall between two highly spin-polarized materials, which takes into account the effect of the electrical bias on the spin-flip probability of an electron crossing the wall. We show that increasing the voltage reduces the spin-flip rate, and is therefore equivalent to reducing the width of the domain wall. As an application, we show that this effect widens the temperature window in which the operation of a unipolar spin diode is nearly ideal.
Motivated by manipulating the magnetic order of bilayer CrI$_3$, we carry out microscopic calculations to find the magnetic order and various magnetic domains of the system in the presence of an electric field. Making use of density functional simulations, a spin model Hamiltonian is introduced consisting of isotropic exchange couplings, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction, and on-site magnetic anisotropy. The spin dynamics of two well-known states of bilayer CrI$_3$, low temperature (LT) and high temperature (HT) phases, are obtained by solving the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation. We show…
We show how the axial (chiral) anomaly induces a spin torque on the magnetization in magnetic Weyl semimetals. The anomaly produces an imbalance in left- and right-handed chirality carriers when non-orthogonal electric and magnetic fields are applied. Such imbalance generates a spin density which exerts a torque on the magnetization, the strength of which can be controlled by the intensity of the applied electric field. We show how this results in an electric control of the chirality of domain walls, as well as in an improvement of the domain wall dynamics, by delaying the onset of the Walker …
Electric field effects in ferromagnetic/oxide dielectric structures provide a new route to control domain wall (DW) dynamics with low power dissipation. However, electric field effects on DW velocities have only been observed so far in the creep regime where DW velocities are low due to strong interactions with pinning sites. Here, we show gate voltage modulation of DW velocities ranging from the creep to the flow regime in Ta/Co40Fe40B20/MgO/TiO2 structures with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. We demonstrate a universal description of the role of applied electric fields in the various pinn…
Ferroelectric materials are spontaneous symmetry breaking systems characterized by ordered electric polarizations. Similar to its ferromagnetic counterpart, a ferroelectric domain wall can be regarded as a soft interface separating two different ferroelectric domains. Here we show that two bound state excitations of electric polarization (polar wave), or the vibration and breathing modes, can be hosted and propagate within the ferroelectric domain wall. Specially, the vibration polar wave has zero frequency gap, thus is constricted deeply inside ferroelectric domain wall, and can propagate eve…
Using low-resistance electrical contacts, we have measured the intrinsic high-field transport properties of metallic single-wall carbon nanotubes. Individual nanotubes appear to be able to carry currents with a density exceeding 10^9 A/cm^2. As the bias voltage is increased, the conductance drops dramatically due to scattering of electrons. We show that the current-voltage characteristics can be explained by considering optical or zone-boundary phonon emission as the dominant scattering mechanism at high field.
Domain walls, topological defects that define the frontier between regions of different stacking in multilayer graphene, have proved to host exciting physics. The ability of tuning these topological defects in-situ in an electronic transport experiment brings a wealth of possibilities in terms of fundamental understanding of domain walls as well as for electronic applications. Here, we demonstrate through a MEMS (micro-electromechanical system) actuator and magnetoresistance measurements the effect of domain walls in multilayer graphene quantum Hall effect. Reversible and controlled uniaxial s…
We investigate how to facilitate the injection of domain walls in chiral ferromagnetic nanowires by electrical means. We calculate the critical current density above which domain walls are injected into the nanowire depending on the material parameters and the source of interaction including spin-transfer torques as well as spin-orbit torques. We demonstrate that the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can significantly reduce the required critical current to inject the types of domain walls favored by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We find that in chiral magnets it is only possible to s…
We numerically investigate the electronic properties of magnetic domain walls formed in a Weyl semimetal. Electric charge distribution is computed from the electron wave functions, by numerically diagonalizing the Hamiltonian under several types of domain walls. We find a certain amount of electric charge localized around the domain wall, depending on the texture of the domain wall. This localized charge stems from the degeneracy of Landau states under the axial magnetic field, which corresponds to the curl in the magnetic texture. The localized charge enables one to drive the domain wall moti…
We study theoretically domain wall (DW) magnons-elementary collective excitations of magnetic DWs -- in easy-axis layered van der Waals (vdW) antiferromagnets, where they behave as normal modes of coupled spin superfluids. We uncover that, due to spin-charge coupling in vdW magnets, such DW magnons can be activated by voltage-induced torques, thereby providing a path for their low-dissipation and nanoscale excitation. Moreover, the electrical activation and the number of DW magnons at a frequency can be controlled by applying symmetry-breaking static magnetic field, adding tunability of signal…
We report the first observation of an optical transition from a ground trion state T to excited trion state T* in (6,5) single-wall carbon nanotubes non-covalently doped with hydrochloric acid. The position of such an excited trion level T* is estimated as 2,12 eV, while the ground trion level T has an energy of 1,08 eV. Besides, pump-probe transient absorption spectroscopy indicates that the ground trion level T cannot be excited directly. Instead, we propose that trions form after nonradioactive relaxation from excitons, dressed by interaction with doping induced hole-polarons. We also repor…
Electric control of multiple domain walls (DWs) motion is demonstrated by Pt/Co/Pt nanotracks with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Due to the weak microstructural disorders with small DW propagation field, the purely current-driven DW motion is achieved in the creep regime at current densities less than 10^7 A/cm^2 at room temperature. It is confirmed that by use of a scanning magneto-optical Kerr effect microscope, several DWs are simultaneously and identically displaced by the same distance in the same direction. Utilizing such DWs motion, we succeed to realize random bits writing and tra…
We theoretically study the magnetoelectric coupling in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator state induced by interfacing a dynamic magnetization texture to a topological insulator. In particular, we propose that the quantum anomalous Hall insulator with a magnetic configuration of a domain wall, when contacted by electrical reservoirs, acts as a magnetoelectric piston. A moving domain wall pumps charge current between electrical leads in a closed circuit, while applying an electrical bias induces reciprocal domain-wall motion. This piston-like action is enabled by a finite reflection of charge c…
The formation of 360° magnetic domain walls (360DWs) in Co and Ni80Fe20 thin film wires was demonstrated experimentally for different wire widths, by successively injecting two 180° domain walls (180DWs) into the wire. For narrow wires (less than 50 nm wide for Co), edge roughness prevented the combination of the 180DWs into a 360DW, and for wide wires (200 nm for Co) the 360DW collapsed, but over an intermediate range of wire widths, reproducible 360DW formation occurred. The annihilation and dissociation of 360DWs was demonstrated by applying a magnetic field parallel to the wire, showing th…
Superconductors with p+ip pairing symmetry are characterized by chiral edge states, but these are difficult to detect in equilibrium since the resulting magnetic field is screened by the Meissner effect. Nonequilibrium detection is hindered by the fact that the edge excitations are unpaired Majorana fermions, which cannot transport charge near the Fermi level. Here we show that the boundary between p_x+ip_y and p_x-ip_y domains forms a one-way channel for electrical charge. We derive a product rule for the domain wall conductance, which allows to cancel the effect of a tunnel barrier between m…
The stochasticity of domain wall (DW) motion in magnetic nanowires has been probed by measuring slow fluctuations, or noise, in electrical resistance at small magnetic fields. By controlled injection of DWs into isolated cylindrical nanowires of nickel, we have been able to track the motion of the DWs between the electrical leads by discrete steps in the resistance. Closer inspection of the time-dependence of noise reveals a diffusive random walk of the DWs with an universal kinetic exponent. Our experiments outline a method with which electrical resistance is able to detect the kinetic state …
The crystal structure of bulk SrTiO$_3$(STO) transitions from cubic to tetragonal at around 105K. Recent local scanning probe measurements of LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ (LAO/STO) interfaces indicated the existence of spatially inhomogeneous electrical current paths and electrostatic potential associated with the structural domain formation in the tetragonal phase of STO. However, how these effects impact the electron conduction in LAO/STO devices has not been fully studied. Here we report a study of temperature dependent electronic transport in combination with the polarized light microscopy of struc…
The use of carbon nanotubes as optical probes for scanning near-field optical microscopy requires an understanding of their near-field response. As a first step in this direction, we investigated the lateral resolution of a carbon nanotube tip with respect to an ideal electric dipole representing an elementary detected object. A Fredholm integral equation of the first kind was formulated for the surface electric current density induced on a single-wall carbon nanotube (SWNT) by the electromagnetic field due to an arbitrarily oriented electric dipole located outside the SWNT. The response of th…
A common scenario of magnetoelectric coupling in multiferroics is the electric polarization induced by spatially modulated spin structures. It is shown in this paper that the same mechanism works in magnetic dielectrics with inhomogeneous magnetization distribution: the domain walls and magnetic vortexes can be the sources of electric polarization. The electric field driven magnetic domain wall motion is observed in iron garnet films. The electric field induced nucleation of vortex state of magnetic nanodots is theoretically predicted and numerically simulated. From the practical point of view…
We derive the equations of motion of a Domain Wall in a thin-film magnet coupled to the surface states of a Topological Insulator in the presence of of both an electric field along the Domain Wall and a magnetic field perpendicular to the junction. We show how the electric field acts as a chirality stabilizer holding off the appearance of Walker breakdown and enhancing the terminal velocity. We also propose a mechanism to reverse the Domain Wall chirality in a controllable manner by tuning the chiral current flowing through the Wall. An input from a weak perpendicular magnetic field is require…
Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected whirling spin textures that can be stabilized in magnetic materials in which a chiral interaction is present. Their limited size together with their robustness against the external perturbations promote them as the ultimate magnetic storage bit in a novel generation of memory and logic devices. Despite many examples of the signature of magnetic skyrmions in the electrical signal, only low temperature measurements, mainly in magnetic materials with B20 crystal structure, have demonstrated the skyrmions contribution to the electrical transport prope…
In magnetic nanowires with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) magnetic domain walls (DW) are narrow and can move rapidly driven by current induced torques. This enables important applications like high-density memories for which the precise detection of the position and motion of a propagating DW is of utmost interest. Today's DW detection tools are often limited in resolution, or acquisition speed, or can only be applied on specific materials. Here, we show that the anomalous Nernst effect provides a simple and powerful tool to precisely track the position and motion of a single DW propa…
We demonstrate an alternative nuclear spin resonance using radio frequency (RF) electric field (nuclear electric resonance: NER) instead of magnetic field. The NER is based on the electronic control of electron spins forming a domain structure. The RF electric field applied to a gate excites spatial oscillations of the domain walls and thus temporal oscillations of the hyperfine field to nuclear spins. The RF power and burst duration dependence of the NER spectrum provides insight into the interplay between nuclear spins and the oscillating domain walls.
Domain walls in three-dimensional Weyl semimetals, formed by localized magnetic moments, are investigated. There appear bound states around the domain wall with the discrete spectrum, among which we find "Fermi arc" states with the linear dispersion. The Fermi arc modes contribute to the electric charge and current localized at the domain wall, which reveal a universal behavior depending only on chemical potential and the splitting of the Weyl nodes. This equilibrium current can be traced back to the chiral magnetic effect, or the edge counterpart of the anomalous Hall effect in the bulk. We p…
Structural and electronic signatures of strain-tunable marginally twisted bilayer graphene
Tsinghua University(清华大学);Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information(量子信息前沿科学中心);Imdea Nanoscience(Imdea纳米科学研究所);Donostia International Physics Center(圣塞巴斯蒂安国际物理中心);Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences(北京量子信息科学研究院);Southern University of Science and Technology(南方科技大学);Hefei National Laboratory(合肥国家实验室)
Recent experiments [L. Ju et al., Nature, 2015, 520, 650] confirm the existence of gapless states at domain walls created in gated bilayer graphene, when the sublattice stacking is changed from AB to BA. These states are significant because they are topologically protected, valley-polarized and give rise to conductance along the domain wall. Current theoretical models predict the appearance of such states only at domain walls, which preserve the sublattice order. Here we show that the appearance of the topologically protected states in stacking domain walls can be much more common in bilayer g…
A three-dimensional topological insulator manifests gapless surface modes, described by two-dimensional Dirac equation. We study magnetic textures, such as domain walls and vortices, in a ferromagnetic thin film deposited on a three-dimensional topological insulator. It is shown that these textures can be electrically charged, ascribed to the proximity effect with the Dirac surface states. We derive a general relation between the electric and the magnetic charges. As a physical consequence, we discuss domain wall motion driven by an applied electric field, which promises magnetic devices with …
Electron - hole pairs are copuously created by an applied electric field near the Dirac point in graphene or similar 2D electronic systems. It was shown recently that for sufficiently large electric fields and ballistic times the I-V characteristics become strongly nonlinear due to Schwinger's pair creation. Since there is no energy gap the radiation from the pairs' annihilation is enhanced. The spectrum of radiation is calculated. The angular and polarization dependence of the emitted photons with respect to the graphene sheet is quite distinctive. For very large currents the recombination ra…
The calculation results of dependencies of electric current in the infinitely long single-wall metallic carbon nanotubes of armchair type with different diameter values on the strength of constant and uniform longitudinal electric field applied to them are presented in this study. On the one hand the results have been obtained by an accurate numerical self-consistent tight-binding full-band solution of the Boltzmann transport equations for electrons and phonons in the electric quantum limit. On the other hand the results have been obtained by solution of these equations after application of a …
Competing magnetic exchange interactions often result in non-collinear magnetic states, such as spin spirals, which break the inversion symmetry and induce ferroelectric polarization. The resulting strong interactions between magnetic and dielectric degrees of freedom lead to a technologically important possibility to control magnetic order by electric fields and to electromagnons, magnetic excitations that can be excited by an electric dipole of the electromagnetic field. Here we study the effects of chiral domain walls on magnetoelectric properties of spiral magnets. We use a quasi-1D model …
The combined action of a transverse spin-polarized current and the current-induced Ørsted field on long ferromagnetic nanostripes is studied numerically and analytically. The magnetization behavior is analyzed for stripes with various widths and for all range of the applied current density. It is established that Ørsted field does not destroy periodical magnetization structures induced by the spin-torque, e.g. vortex-antivortex crystal and cross-tie domain walls. However, the action of the Ørsted field disables the saturation state for the strong currents: a stationary state with a single long…
Any structural transformation of water is sensitive to an external electric field, since water molecules have dipole moments. We study influence of external uniform electric field on crystallization of supercooled water enclosed between two graphene planes. Crystallization of such the system is caused by ordinary relaxation of the metastable phase into an ordered (crystalline) phase and by dipole alignment induced by an applied electric field. We found that this system at the temperature $T=268$ K, where water has the density $0.94$ g/cm$^3$ and the applied electric field is of the magnitude $…
The choice of electrostatic gating over the conventional chemical doping for phase engineering of quantum materials is attributed to the fact that the former can reversibly tune the carrier density without affecting the system's level of disorder. However, this proposition seems to break down in field-effect transistors involving SrTiO$_3$ (STO) based two-dimensional electron gases. Such peculiar behavior is associated with the electron trapping under an external electric field. However, the microscopic nature of trapping centers remains an open question. In this paper, we investigate electric…