Magnetic skyrmions are topological spin textures holding great potential as nanoscale information carriers. Recently, skyrmions have been predicted in antiferromagnets, with key advantages in terms of stability, size, and dynamical properties over their ferromagnetic analogs. However, their experimental demonstration is still lacking. Here, we show the imprint from ferromagnetic skyrmions into a thin film of an IrMn antiferromagnet, at room temperature and zero external magnetic field, using exchange-bias. Using high-spatial-resolution x-ray magnetic circular dichroism photoemission electron microscopy (XMCD-PEEM), we observed the imprinted spin textures within the IrMn from the XMCD signal of the uncompensated Mn spins at the interface with the ferromagnet. This result opens up a path for logic and memory devices based on skyrmion manipulation in antiferromagnets.
@article{arxiv.2009.14796,
title = {Imprint from ferromagnetic skyrmions in an antiferromagnet via exchange bias},
author = {Kumari Gaurav Rana and Rafael Lopes Seeger and Sandra Ruiz-Gómez and Roméo Juge and Qiang Zhang and Kaushik Bairagi and Van Tuong Pham and Mohamed Belmeguenai and Stéphane Auffret and Michael Foerster and Lucia Aballe and Gilles Gaudin and Vincent Baltz and Olivier Boulle},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2009.14796},
year = {2021}
}