Chirality from interfacial spin-orbit coupling effects in magnetic bilayers

Kyoung Whan Kim, Hyun Woo Lee, Kyung Jin Lee, M. D. Stiles

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

149 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

As nanomagnetic devices scale to smaller sizes, spin-orbit coupling due to the broken structural inversion symmetry at interfaces becomes increasingly important. Here, we study interfacial spin-orbit coupling effects in magnetic bilayers using a simple Rashba model. The spin-orbit coupling introduces chirality into the behavior of the electrons and through them into the energetics of the magnetization. In the derived form of the magnetization dynamics, all of the contributions that are linear in the spin-orbit coupling follow from this chirality, considerably simplifying the analysis. For these systems, an important consequence is a correlation between the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the spin-orbit torque. We use this correlation to analyze recent experiments.

Original languageEnglish
Article number216601
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume111
Issue number21
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013 Nov 19

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Physics and Astronomy(all)

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