Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction induced by an ultrashort electromagnetic pulse: Application to coherent (anti)ferromagnetic skyrmion nucleation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how ultrashort electromagnetic pulses can induce Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in ultrathin metal films, enabling ultrafast coherent nucleation of antiferromagnetic skyrmions without structural inversion-symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate tunable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions via ultrashort pulses, facilitating rapid skyrmion nucleation in magnetic materials.

Findings

Electric field-induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction estimated for various metals.

Ultrafast (100-fs) nucleation of antiferromagnetic skyrmions demonstrated.

Interaction strength tunable by electromagnetic pulse amplitude.

Abstract

We show how a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can be generated in an ultrathin metal film from the induced internal electric field created by an ultrashort electromagnetic pulse. This interaction does not require structural inversion-symmetry breaking, and its amplitude can be tuned depending on the amplitude of the field. We perform first-principles calculations to estimate the strength of the field-induced magnetoelectric coupling for ferromagnetic Fe, Co, and Ni, and antiferromagnetic Mn, as well as FePt alloys. Last, using atomistic simulations, we demonstrate how an isolated antiferromagnetic skyrmion can be coherently nucleated from the collinear background by an ultrashort pulse in electric field on a 100-fs timescale.