Direct observation of the skyrmion Hall effect

By Wanjun Jiang, Xichao Zhang, Guoqiang Yu, W. Zhang, Xiao Wang, M. Jungfleisch, J. Pearson, Xuemei Cheng, O. Heinonen, Kang L. Wang and 3 more. Nature Physics, 2016

1,129 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The well-known Hall effect describes the transverse deflection of charged particles (electrons/holes) as a result of the Lorentz force. Similarly, it is intriguing to examine if quasi-particles without an electric charge, but with a topological charge, show related transverse motion. Magnetic skyrmions with a well-defined spin texture with a unit topological charge serve as good candidates to test this hypothesis. In spite of the recent progress made on investigating magnetic skyrmions, direct observation of the skyrmion Hall effect has remained elusive. Here, by using a current-induced spin Hall spin torque, we experimentally demonstrate the skyrmion Hall effect, and the resultant skyrmion accumulation, by driving skyrmions from the creep-motion regime (where their dynamics are influenced by pinning defects) into the steady-flow-motion regime. The experimental observation of transverse transport of skyrmions due to topological charge may potentially create many exciting opportunities, such as topological selection. Experiments show that when driven by electric currents, magnetic skyrmions experience transverse motion due to their topological charge — similar to the conventional Hall effect experienced by charged particles in a perpendicular magnetic field.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2565612f4a893f5d22537c58bf95d7432ae6a55b

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Citations in the corpus

Interface-Induced Phenomena in Magnetism (2016, positive): “Recent experiments demonstrating stabilization and current-driven motion of skyrmionic bubbles in thin films [Jiang et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2015b; Moreau-Luchaire et al., 2016; Woo et al., 2016; Boulle et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2016] suggest that the topic is ripe for further discovery and pote”
Skyrmion-electronics: writing, deleting, reading and processing magnetic skyrmions toward spintronic applications (2019, background): “In 2017, Jiang et al [218] and Litzius et al [219] directly observed the SkHE (see figure 11(b)) in room-temperature experiments where skyrmions are driven by the current-induced SOTs.”
Skyrmions in magnetic multilayers (2017, methodology): “discussed in section 3.2, for which the dynamic generation of Néel skyrmions with electrical currents was demonstrated. In those initial experiments, a transverse motion was not conclusively observed [41, 42, 95], in contrast to the theoretical modeling [204]. However, subsequent studies show a curr”
Skyrmion Hall effect revealed by direct time-resolved X-ray microscopy (2016, neutral): “e note that during the preparation of this manuscript, we became aware of a related static observation of the skyrmion Hall angle as a function of current density and a corresponding theoretical work [24,25] showing qualitatively a similar trend at low current densities that could originate from pin”
Beyond skyrmions: Review and perspectives of alternative magnetic quasiparticles (2020, background): “Still, it has been predicted [8] and observed [15, 16] that the skyrmions do not move parallel to the current, but experience a transverse deflection in this case.”