Imprinting of skyrmions and bimerons in an antiferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a new method for nucleating antiferromagnetic skyrmions and bimerons through texture imprinting in multilayer structures, overcoming previous challenges related to complex multilayers and lack of net magnetization.

Contribution

It introduces a viable texture imprinting technique using atomistic spin simulations to nucleate AFM skyrmions and bimerons in clean multilayer structures.

Findings

Successful texture imprinting of AFM skyrmions and bimerons demonstrated

Imprinting method overcomes previous multilayer complexity issues

Provides insights into static and dynamic properties of AFM textures

Abstract

Topologically protected magnetic states in condensed matter physics, particularly antiferromagnetic (AFM) skyrmions (Sks) and bimerons (Bms), offer promising prospects for terahertz dynamics and sustained current-induced motion, thanks to their compensating multiple sub-lattice structure. However, nucleating AFM Sks and Bms is challenging due to the lack of net magnetization. Previous attempts to imprint pre-defined Sks and Bms in a ferromagnet (FM) and transfer them to an AFM using interfacial exchange bias in FM/AFM heterostructures have been hindered by complex multilayers with discontinuities, polycrystallinity, or multipartite chiral AFMs. Employing atomistic spin simulations, we demonstrate the viability of texture imprinting for nucleating Sks and Bms in AFMs, using a prototypical bipartite AFM layer in a multilayer structure free from discontinuities. Such imprinting is a crucial step towards understanding the static and dynamic properties of natural antiferromagnetic textures and their unique properties.