The nucleation of reversed magnetic domains in Pt/Co/AlOx microstructures with perpendicular anisotropy was studied experimentally in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field. For large enough in-plane field, nucleation was observed preferentially at an edge of the sample normal to this field. The position at which nucleation takes place was observed to depend in a chiral way on the initial magnetization and applied field directions. An explanation of these results is proposed, based on the existence of a sizable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in this sample. Another consequence of this interaction is that the energy of domain walls can become negative for in-plane fields smaller than the effective anisotropy field.
@article{arxiv.1403.4694,
title = {Chirality-induced asymmetric magnetic nucleation in Pt/Co/AlOx ultrathin microstructures},
author = {Stefania Pizzini and Jan Vogel and Stanislas Rohart and Liliana-Daniela Buda and E. Jué and Olivier Boulle and Ioan Mihai Miron and C. K. Safeer and Stéphane Auffret and Gilles Gaudin and André Thiaville},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1403.4694},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
Published version, Physical Review Letters 113, 047203 (2014)