Metastable solitonic states in the strained itinerant helimagnet FeGe

Abstract

Tensile strain is a promising tool for the creation and manipulation of magnetic solitonic textures in chiral helimagnets via tunable control of magnetic anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Here, by using in situ resonant small-angle x-ray scattering, we demonstrate that skyrmion and chiral soliton lattices can be achieved as metastable states in FeGe lamella as distinct states under tensile strain and magnetic fields in various orientations with respect to the deformation. The small-angle scattering data can be well accounted for in the framework of the analytical model for a soliton lattice. By using the experimental results and analytical theory, the unwinding of metastable skyrmions in a perpendicular magnetic field as shown by a small-angle scattering experiment was analyzed via micromagnetic simulation.

Discretized evolution of solitons in the achiral stripe phase of a Fe/Gd thin film

“…In summary, the coherent X-ray magnetic scattering results presented here clearly show that one-dimensional stripe lattice (1D-SL) in the dipolar-interaction mediated Fe/Gd multilayer behaves like a finite-sized chiral soliton lattice, as observed in single-crystals of dominant DMI [7,30]. Discrete jumps in stripe-periodicity and intensity variation of 1 st and 2 nd order satellite diffraction peaks of the stripe lattice follow soliton sine-Gordon model [24] even though the stripe phase in the Fe/Gd multilayer exhibits an equal population of coexisting and opposite helicity spin-stripes.…”

Chiral surface spin textures in Cu$_2$OSeO$_3$ unveiled by soft x-ray scattering in specular reflection geometry

“…Due to the high absorption at soft x-ray energies and limited momentum transfer range, two experimental XRMS geometries are typically utilized: 1) small-angle x-ray scattering from thinned crystals in transmission [26,[34][35][36][37][38][39]; and 2) diffraction in the vicinity of a structural (or a magnetic) Bragg peak [27,31,[40][41][42][43]. The latter is only applicable if Bragg reflection is allowed in the momentum transfer range available with the wavelength given at the resonant condition, e.g the L 3 or L 2 edges of a transition metal.…”

Hybrid Bloch-Néel spiral states in Mn1.4PtSn probed by resonant soft x-ray scattering

“…However, this was utilized only to produce a certain field history as the measurements cannot be conducted when the sample plate is parallel to the beam due to the geometrical constraints. Similar field-training procedures were previously utilized to study the interplay of the in-plane magnetic field and various metamagnetic textures in chiral skyrmion host FeGe [27].…”