Focused issue on antiferromagnetic spintronics: An overview (Part of a collection of reviews on antiferromagnetic spintronics)

TL;DR

This overview introduces the key physical principles, recent advances, and diverse phenomena in antiferromagnetic spintronics, covering device applications, fundamental dynamics, and topological effects in various magnetic structures.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive, coherent summary of the current state and key physical aspects of antiferromagnetic spintronics, integrating multiple review articles.

Findings

Antiferromagnetic materials exhibit diverse magnetic orders including collinear, non-collinear, and non-coplanar structures.

Applications include microelectronic memory devices and optical manipulation techniques.

The field explores the interplay between antiferromagnetic spintronics and topological phenomena.

Abstract

This focused issue attempts to provide a comprehensive introduction into the field of antiferromagnetic spintronics. Apart from the brief overview below, it features five review articles. The intention is to cover in a coherent and complementary way key physical aspects of the antiferromagnetic spintronics research. These range from microelectronic memory devices and optical manipulation and detection of antiferromagnetic spins, to the fundamentals of antiferromagnetic dynamics in uniform or spin-textured systems, and to the interplay of antiferromagnetic spintronics with topological phenomena. The antiferromagnetic ordering can take a number of forms including fully compensated collinear, non-collinear, and non-coplanar magnetic lattices, compensated and uncompensated ferrimagnets, or metamagnetic materials hosting an antiferromagnetic to ferromagnetic phase transition. Apart from the variety of distinct magnetic crystal structures, the focused issue also encompasses spintronic phenomena and devices studied in antiferromagnet/ferromagnet heterostructures and in synthetic antiferromagnets.