Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topological spin textures that exhibit many exciting properties and may advance the nonvolatile spintronics [1-3]. In this talk, I will first review our experimental results in the electric creation and manipulation of magnetic skyrmions at room temperature in a Ta/CoFeB/TaO_x trilayer with an interfacial inversion symmetry breaking, which was enabled by the inhomogeneous current induced spin-orbit torques [4-6]. Secondly, I will demonstrate experimentally a real space spin-topology driven dynamics of magnetic skyrmion – the skyrmion Hall effect [7-8]. Thirdly, Brownian motion of a single magnetic skyrmion driven by the random thermal fluctuations, and its connection with spin topology will be both numerically and experimentally investigated. Finally, some most recent experimental results on the miniaturization of skyrmions and our approach towards antiferromagnetic skyrmions will be discussed.

References

[1]        A. Fert, et al., Nature Nanotechnology, 8, 152 (2013).

[2]        N. Nagaosa, et al., Nature Nanotechnology 8, 899-911 (2013).

[3]        W. Jiang, et al., Physics Reports, 704, 1-49 (2017).

[4]        W. Jiang, et al., Science 349, 283 (2015).

[5]        W. Jiang, et al., AIP Advances 6, 055602 (2016).

[6]        O. Heinonen, et al., Physical Review B 93, 094407 (2016).

[7]        W. Jiang, et al., Nature Physics,13, 162 (2017).

[8]        K. Litzius, et al., Nature Physics,13, 170 (2017).

Wanjun Jiang is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Tsinghua University where his research interests focus primarily on the skyrmion based spintronics. Prior to join Tsinghua, he spent 6 years working as postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Kang L. Wang at UCLA (09.2010-03.2014) and Dr. Axel Hoffmann at Argonne National Laboratory (04.2014-07.2016), respectively. Wanjun Jiang got his Ph.D. on studying magnetic phase transition from the University of Manitoba, Canada (01.2006-08.2010). He has published more than 60 papers, including Science, Nature Physics, Physics Reports and Physical Review Letters.