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Topologically protected magnetic textures, such as skyrmions, half-skyrmions (merons) and their antiparticles, constitute tiny whirls in the magnetic order. They are promising candidates for information carriers in next-generation memory devices, as they can be efficiently propelled at very high velocities using current-induced spin torques. Antiferromagnets have been shown to host versions of these textures, which have gained significant attention because of their potential for terahertz dynamics, deflection free motion, and improved size scaling due to the absence of stray field. Here we show that topological spin textures, merons and antimerons, can be generated at room temperature and reversibly moved using electrical pulses in thin film CuMnAs, a semimetallic antiferromagnet that is a testbed system for spintronic applications. The electrical generation and manipulation of antiferromagnetic merons is a crucial step towards realizing the full potential of antiferromagnetic thin films as active components in high density, high speed magnetic memory devices., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

A mgnetic bimeron is an in-plane topological counterpart of a magnetic skyrmion. Despite the topological equivalence, their statics and dynamics could be distinct, making them attractive from the perspectives of both physics and spintronic applications. In this work, we investigate an antiferromagnetic (AFM) thin film with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), and introduce the AFM bimeron cluster as a new form of topological quasi-particle. Bimerons demonstrate high current-driven mobility as generic AFM solitons, while featuring anisotropic and relativistic dynamics excited by currents with in-plane and out-of-plane polarizations, respectively. Moreover, these spin textures can absorb other bimeron solitons or clusters along the translational direction to acquire a wide range of N\'eel topological numbers. The clustering involves the rearrangement of topological structures, and gives rise to remarkable changes in static and dynamical properties. The merits of AFM bimeron clusters reveal a potential path to unify multi-bit data creation, transmission, storage and even topology-based computation within the same material system, and may stimulate innovative spintronic devices enabling new paradigms of data manipulations., Comment: 10 pages

We demonstrate that the Magnus force acting on magnetic skyrmions can be efficiently tuned via modulation of the spin-orbit interaction strength. We show that the skyrmion Hall effect, which is a direct consequence of the non-vanishing Magnus force on the magnetic structure can be suppressed in certain limits. Our calculations show that the emergent magnetic fields in the presence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) renormalize the Lorentz force on itinerant electrons and thus influence the topological transport. In particular, we show that for a N\'eel-type skyrmion and Bloch-type antiskyrmion, the skyrmion Hall effect (SkHE) can vanish by tuning appropriately the strength of Rashba and Dresselhaus SOCs, respectively. Our results open up alternative directions to explore in a bid to overcome the parasitic and undesirable SkHE for spintronic applications., Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures

The lifetime of antiskyrmions at room temperature in a Mn-Pt-Sn tetragonal Heusler material has been calculated using an atomic scale representation including nearly a million spins. The evaluation of the pre-exponential factor in the Arrhenius rate expression for this large system is made possible by an implementation of harmonic transition state theory that avoids evaluation of the eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix.The parameter values in the extended Heisenberg Hamiltonian, including anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, are chosen to reproduce experimental observations [A. K. Nayak $\it{et\,al.}$, Nature $\textbf{548}$, 561 (2017)], in particular the 150 nm diameter. The calculated results are consistent with the long lifetime observed in the laboratory and this exceptional stability of the antiskyrmions is found to result from large activation energy for collapse due to strong exchange coupling while the pre-exponential factor in the Arrhenius expression for the lifetime is found to have a typical magnitude of 10$^{-12}$ s, despite the large number of spins. The long lifetime is, therefore, found to result from energetic effects rather than entropic effects in this system.

We demonstrate that the nontrivial magnetic texture of antiferromagnetic skyrmions (AFM-Sks) promotes a non-vanishing topological spin Hall effect (TSHE) on the flowing electrons. This results in a substantial enhancement of the non-adiabatic torque and hence improves the skyrmion mobility. This non-adiabatic torque increases when decreasing the skyrmion size, and therefore scaling down results in a much higher torque efficiency. In clean AFM-Sks, we find a significant boost of the TSHE close to van Hove singularity. Interestingly, this effect is enhanced away from the band gap in the presence of non-magnetic interstitial defects. Furthermore, unlike their ferromagnetic counterpart, TSHE in AFM-Sks increases with increase in disorder strength thus opening promising avenues for materials engineering of this effect., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

We formulate a general microscopic approach to spin-orbit torques in thin ferromagnet/heavy-metal bilayers in linear response to electric current or electric field. The microscopic theory we develop avoids the notion of spin currents and spin-Hall effect. Instead, the torques are directly related to a local spin polarization of conduction electrons, which is computed from generalized Kubo-St\v{r}eda formulas. A symmetry analysis provides a one-to-one correspondence between polarization susceptibility tensor components and different torque terms in the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation for magnetization dynamics. The spin-orbit torques arising from Rashba or Dresselhaus type of spin-orbit interaction are shown to have different symmetries. We analyze these spin-orbit torques microscopically for a generic electron model in the presence of an arbitrary smooth magnetic texture. For a model with spin-independent disorder we find a major cancelation of the torques. In this case the only remaining torque corresponds to the magnetization-independent Edelstein effect. Furthermore, our results are applied to analyze the dynamics of a Skyrmion under the action of electric current., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

Domain wall dynamics in a magnetoelectric antiferromagnet is analyzed, and its implications for magnetoelectric memory applications are discussed. Cr$_2$O$_3$ is used in the estimates of the materials parameters. It is found that the domain wall mobility has a maximum as a function of the electric field due to the gyrotropic coupling induced by it. In Cr$_2$O$_3$ the maximal mobility of 0.1 m/(s$\times$Oe) is reached at $E\approx0.06$ V/nm. Fields of this order may be too weak to overcome the intrinsic depinning field, which is estimated for B-doped Cr$_2$O$_3$. These major drawbacks for device implementation can be overcome by applying a small in-plane shear strain, which blocks the domain wall precession. Domain wall mobility of about 0.7 m/(s$\times$Oe) can then be achieved at $E=0.2$ V/nm. A split-gate scheme is proposed for the domain-wall controlled bit element; its extension to multiple-gate linear arrays can offer advantages in memory density, programmability, and logic functionality., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, revised and corrected version, accepted in Applied Physics Letters

We study current-induced dynamics of spin textures in thin magnetic nanowires. We derive effective equations of motion describing the dynamics of the domain-wall soft modes associated with topological defects. Because the magnetic domain walls are topological objects, these equations are universal and depend only on a few parameters. We obtain spin spiral domain-wall structure in ferromagnetic wires with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and critical current dependence on this interaction. We also find the most efficient way to move the domain walls by resonant current pulses and propose a procedure to determine their dynamics by measuring the voltage induced by a moving domain wall. Based on translationally non-invariant nanowires, we show how to make prospective magnetic memory nanodevices much more energy efficient., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Invited MISM-2014 conference proceeding for special issue in JMMM

We derive expressions for the efficiency and figure of merit of two spin caloritronic devices based on the spin Seebeck effect (SSE), i.e., the generation of spin currents by a temperature gradient. The inverse spin Hall effect is conventionally used to detect the SSE and offers advantages for large area applications. We also propose a device that converts spin current into electric one by means of a spin-valve detector, which scales favorably to small sizes and approaches a figure of merit of 0.5 at room temperature., Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figures, update to published version

We study the response of topological insulator films to strong magnetic and electric fields beyond the linear response theory. As a model, we use the three-dimensional lattice Wilson-Dirac Hamiltonian where we simultaneously introduce both magnetic field through the Peierls substitution and electric field as a potential energy depending on lattice coordinate. We compute the electron energy spectrum by numerically diagonalizing this Hamiltonian and obtain quantized magnetoelectric polarizability. In addition, we find that the magnetoelectric effect vanishes as the film width decreases due to the hybridization of surface wave functions. Furthermore, applying a gate voltage between the surfaces, we observe several quantized plateaus of $\theta$ term, which are mainly determined by the Landau level structures on the top and bottom surfaces., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, update to published version

Antiferromagnets can be used to store and manipulate spin information, but the coupled dynamics of the staggered field and the magnetization are very complex. We present a theory which is conceptually much simpler and which uses collective coordinates to describe staggered field dynamics in antiferromagnetic textures. The theory includes effects from dissipation, external magnetic fields, as well as reactive and dissipative current-induced torques. We conclude that, at low frequencies and amplitudes, currents induce collective motion by means of dissipative rather than reactive torques. The dynamics of a one-dimensional domain wall, pinned at 90$^{\circ}$ at its ends, are described as a driven harmonic oscillator with a natural frequency inversely proportional to the length of the texture., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

We study the thermoelectric properties of three-dimensional topological insulators in magnetic fields with many holes (or pores) in the bulk. We find that at high density of these holes in the transport direction the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, can be large due to the contribution of the topologically protected conducting surfaces and the suppressed phonon thermal conductivity. By applying an external magnetic field a subgap can be induced in the surface states spectrum. We show that the thermoelectric efficiency can be controlled by this tunable subgap leading to the values of ZT much greater than 1. Such high values of ZT for reasonable system parameters and its tunability by magnetic field make this system a strong candidate for applications in heat management of nanodevices, especially at low temperatures., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of MMM 2011

We generalize domain-wall dynamics to the case of translationally noninvariant ferromagnetic nanowires. The obtained equations of motion make the description of the domain-wall propagation more realistic by accounting for the variations along the wire, such as disorder or change in the wire shape. We show that the effective equations of motion are very general and do not depend on the model details. As an example of their use, we consider an hourglass-shaped nanostrip in detail. A transverse domain wall is trapped in the middle and has two stable magnetization directions. We study the switching between the two directions by short current pulses. We obtain the exact time dependence of the current pulses required to switch the magnetization with the minimal Ohmic losses per switching. Furthermore, we find how the Ohmic losses per switching depend on the switching time for the optimal current pulse. As a result, we show that as a magnetic memory this nanodevice can be $10^5$ times more energy efficient than the best modern devices., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, update to published version

Topological insulators have gapless edge/surface states with novel transport properties. Among these, there are two classes of perfectly conducting channels which are free from backscattering: the edge states of two-dimensional topological insulators and the one-dimensional states localized on dislocations of certain three-dimensional topological insulators. We show how these novel states affect thermoelectric properties of the systems and discuss possibilities to improve the thermoelectric figure of merit using these materials with perfectly conducting channels., Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, proceedings for The 19th International Conference on the Application of High Magnetic Fields in Semiconductor Physics and Nanotechnology (HMF-19)

The motion of a vortex domain wall in a ferromagnetic strip of submicron width under the influence of an external magnetic field exhibits three distinct dynamical regimes. In a viscous regime at low fields the wall moves rigidly with a velocity proportional to the field. Above a critical field the viscous motion breaks down giving way to oscillations accompanied by a slow drift of the wall. At still higher fields the drift velocity starts rising with the field again but with a much lower mobility dv/dH than in the viscous regime. To describe the dynamics of the wall we use the method of collective coordinates that focuses on soft modes of the system. By retaining two soft modes, parametrized by the coordinates of the vortex core, we obtain a simple description of the wall dynamics at low and intermediate applied fields that describes both the viscous and oscillatory regimes below and above the breakdown. The calculated dynamics agrees well with micromagnetic simulations at low and intermediate values of the driving field. In higher fields, additional modes become soft and the two-mode approximation is no longer sufficient. We explain some of the significant features of vortex domain wall motion in high fields through the inclusion of additional modes associated with the half-antivortices on the strip edge., Comment: Minor revisions as suggested by referee

In this report we demonstrate a simple model for the motion of a vortex domain wall in a ferromagnetic strip of submicron width under the influence of an external magnetic field. The model exhibits three distinct dynamical regimes. In a viscous regime at low fields the wall moves rigidly with a velocity proportional to the field. Above a critical field the motion becomes underdamped as the vortex moves periodically across the strip; these oscillations are accompanied by a slow drift with a decreasing velocity. At still higher fields the drift velocity starts rising linearly with the field again but with a much lower mobility dv/dH than in the low-field regime. We calculate the relevant quantities and compare them to experimentally observed values.

We express dynamics of domain walls in ferromagnetic nanowires in terms of collective coordinates generalizing Thiele's steady-state results. For weak external perturbations the dynamics is dominated by a few soft modes. The general approach is illustrated on the example of a vortex wall relevant to recent experiments with flat nanowires. A two-mode approximation gives a quantitatively accurate description of both the steady viscous motion of the wall in weak magnetic fields and its oscillatory behavior in moderately high fields above the Walker breakdown., Comment: 4 pages, update to published version

We examine the T=0 phase diagram of a thin ferromagnetic film with a strong out-of-plane anisotropy in the vicinity of the reorientation phase transition (with Co on Pt as an example). The phase diagram in the anisotropy-applied field plane is universal in the limit where the film thickness is the shortest length scale. It contains uniform fully magnetized and canted phases, as well as periodically nonuniform states: a weakly modulated spin-density wave and strongly modulated stripes. We determine the boundaries of metastability of these phases and point out the existence of a critical point at which the difference between the SDW and stripes vanishes. Out-of-plane magnetization curves exhibit a variety of hysteresis loops caused by the coexistence of one or more phases. Additionally, we study the effect of a system edge on the orientation of stripes. We compare our results with recent experiments., Comment: added references and clarified derivations in response to referee comments

We point out that a peculiar annihilation of a vortex-antovortex pair observed numerically by Hertel and Schneider [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 177202 (2006)] represents the formation and subsequent decay of a skyrmion., Comment: 2 pages, update to published version

Current switching in a double-barrier resonant tunneling structure is studied in the regime where the current-voltage characteristic exhibits intrinsic bistability, so that in a certain range of bias two different steady states of current are possible. Near the upper boundary V_{th} of the bistable region the upper current state is metastable, and because of the shot noise it eventually decays to the stable lower current state. We find the time of this switching process in strip-shaped devices, with the width small compared to the length. As the bias V is tuned away from the boundary value V_{th} of the bistable region, the mean switching time \tau increases exponentially. We show that in long strips \ln\tau \propto (V_{th} -V)^{5/4}, whereas in short strips \ln\tau \propto (V_{th} -V)^{3/2}. The one-dimensional geometry of the problem enables us to obtain analytically exact expressions for both the exponential and the prefactor of \tau. Furthermore, we show that, depending on the parameters of the system, the switching can be initiated either inside the strip, or at its ends., Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, update to published version

Current-voltage characteristics of resonant-tunneling structures often exhibit intrinsic bistabilities. In the bistable region of the I-V curve one of the two current states is metastable. The system switches from the metastable state to the stable one at a random moment in time. The mean switching time \tau depends exponentially on the bias measured from the boundary of the bistable region V_{th}. We find full expressions for \tau (including prefactors) as functions of bias, sample geometry, and in-plane conductivity. Our results take universal form upon appropriate renormalization of the threshold voltage V_{th}. We also show that in large samples the switching initiates inside, at the edge, or at a corner of the sample depending on the parameters of the system., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures

We investigate the transport of electrons through a double-barrier resonant-tunneling structure in the regime where the current-voltage characteristics exhibit bistability. In this regime one of the states is metastable, and the system eventually switches from it to the stable state. We show that the mean switching time grows exponentially as the voltage across the device is tuned from the its boundary value into the bistable region. In samples of small area we find that the logarithm of the lifetime is proportional to the voltage (measured from its boundary value) to the 3/2 power, while in larger samples the logarithm of the lifetime is linearly proportional to the voltage., Comment: REVTeX 4, 5 pages, 3 EPS-figures