Newly discovered magnetic state could lead to green IT solutions

A magnetic skyrmion is a quasiparticle, a magnetic swirl, which once created is highly stable and cannot collapse. Moreover, skyrmions are tiny and they can travel through materials nearly unimpededly, much like tsunamis travel through the oceans. These unique properties make skyrmions promising building blocks for green IT applications, such as high density hard drives without any moving parts.

New state

Since their initial discovery almost 10 years ago, skyrmions have been found to be ubiquitous. The past years have seen the discovery of new types of skyrmions, as well as new material classes that host skyrmions. However, all these systems show the same generic behaviour, which was therefore assumed to be universal.

Now, however, the physicists discovered an entirely new state that does not fit into the universal scheme and may be used to manipulate skyrmions. "This state appears under the influence of high magnetic fields and low temperatures", said Katia Pappas of Delft University of Technology. "Nobody, including us, had expected to find it there."

Neutron scattering

The researchers obtained experimental confirmation for this new phase through the use of neutron scattering, magnetization and AC magnetic susceptibility measurements. Small angle neutron scattering, first at the Laboratoire Léon Brillouin, France, and finally at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in the USA, provided the crucial evidence. It revealed a change in the microscopic structure when magnetic spirals that are aligned along a magnetic field drift away from it when the magnetic field increases. "This is unexpected’, Pappas said. ‘It is as if a ball that lies on the ground starts levitating when its mass or the gravitational force increases"

The theoretical explanation of this surprising result, provided by the Hiroshima and Groningen groups, is based on the strong sensitivity of the magnetic spirals to weak interactions of relativistic origin. Thus, a slight change in the balance of relatively weak interactions can have major consequences on the magnetic properties of these chiral magnets.

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