Unveiling the emergent traits of chiral spin textures in magnetic multilayers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the fundamental properties and evolution of chiral spin textures, including skyrmions and magnetic stripes, in magnetic multilayers, revealing how their structure and stability change with varying chiral interactions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive experimental and theoretical analysis of chiral spin textures, elucidating their domain wall structure, stability, and morphological transitions in tunable multilayer systems.

Findings

Emergence of Ne9el helicity with increasing chiral interactions

Reduction in domain compressibility as chiral interactions increase

Transformation in skyrmion formation mechanism

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically wound nanoscale textures of spins whose ambient stability and electrical manipulation in multilayer films have led to an explosion of research activities. While past efforts focused predominantly on isolated skyrmions, recently ensembles of chiral spin textures, consisting of skyrmions and magnetic stripes, were shown to possess rich interactions with potential for device applications. However, several fundamental aspects of chiral spin texture phenomenology remain to be elucidated, including their domain wall structure, thermodynamic stability, and morphological transitions. Here we unveil the evolution of these textural characteristics on a tunable multilayer platform - wherein chiral interactions governing spin texture energetics can be widely varied - using a combination of full-field electron and soft X-ray microscopies with numerical simulations. With increasing chiral interactions, we demonstrate the emergence of N\'eel helicity, followed by a marked reduction in domain compressibility, and finally a transformation in the skyrmion formation mechanism. Together with an analytical model, these experiments establish a comprehensive microscopic framework for investigating and tailoring chiral spin texture character in multilayer films.