Interplay of magnetic textures with spin-orbit coupled substrates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how magnetic textures like skyrmions interact with substrate-induced spin-orbit coupling, revealing non-additive effects that influence local currents and global transport, with implications for skyrmionics and topological superconductivity.

Contribution

It demonstrates that induced SOC from magnetic textures and substrate SOC are generally non-additive, using a spintronics gauge theory approach and analyzing transport properties.

Findings

Induced SOC and substrate SOC are non-additive.

Local currents match gauge theory predictions.

Global transport confirms non-additive SOC effects.

Abstract

Magnetic textures such as skyrmions in thin films grown on substrates possess significant technological potential. Inhomogeneous magnetic structures can be described as homogeneous ferromagnetic order in the presence of anisotropic spin-orbit coupling (SOC). It remains unexplored, however, how this {\it induced} SOC stemming from the magnetic textures interacts with the SOC of the substrate. Here we show that these two contributions to SOC are in general {\it not} additive. We demonstrate this by employing a spintronics gauge theory. We further compute local currents which, when considered in the proper frame, match the spintronics gauge theory results. Finally, we analyze global transport quantities and show that they substantiate our previous results quantitatively. The implications for skyrmionics as well as topological superconductivity are discussed.