Interface-Induced Phenomena in Magnetism

TL;DR

This review discusses how interfaces influence magnetic properties and phenomena, emphasizing recent discoveries in interface-induced magnetism, spin transport, and dynamic effects driven by spin-orbit coupling and symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent progress in understanding interfacial effects in magnetism, highlighting new scientific results and future research directions.

Findings

Discovery of interface-induced magnetism

Observation of non-collinear spin textures at interfaces

Advances in ultrafast magnetization control via interfaces

Abstract

This article reviews static and dynamic interfacial effects in magnetism, focusing on interfacially-driven magnetic effects and phenomena associated with spin-orbit coupling and intrinsic symmetry breaking at interfaces. It provides a historical background and literature survey, but focuses on recent progress, identifying the most exciting new scientific results and pointing to promising future research directions. It starts with an introduction and overview of how basic magnetic properties are affected by interfaces, then turns to a discussion of charge and spin transport through and near interfaces and how these can be used to control the properties of the magnetic layer. Important concepts include spin accumulation, spin currents, spin transfer torque, and spin pumping. An overview is provided to the current state of knowledge and existing review literature on interfacial effects such as exchange bias, exchange spring magnets, spin Hall effect, oxide heterostructures, and topological insulators. The article highlights recent discoveries of interface-induced magnetism and non-collinear spin textures, non-linear dynamics including spin torque transfer and magnetization reversal induced by interfaces, and interfacial effects in ultrafast magnetization processes.