Twisted domain walls and skyrmions in perpendicularly magnetized multilayers

• Main Authors: Lemesh, Ivan (Contributor), Beach, Geoffrey Stephen (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society, 2018-09-13T19:50:06Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We present an analytical theory to describe three-dimensional magnetic textures in perpendicularly magnetized magnetic multilayers that arise in the presence of magnetostatic interactions and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). We demonstrate that domain walls in multilayers develop a complex twisted structure, which persists even for films with strong DMI. The origin of this twist is surface-volume stray field interactions that manifest as a depth-dependent effective field whose form mimics the DMI effective field. We find that the wall twist has a minor impact on the equilibrium skyrmion or domain size but can significantly affect current-driven dynamics. Our conclusions are based on the derived analytical expressions for the magnetostatic energy and confirmed by micromagnetic simulations.
United States. Department of Energy. Office of Basic Energy Sciences (Award DE-SC0012371)