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Quantification of Magnetic Surface and Edge States in an FeGe Nanostripe by Off-Axis Electron Holography

Dongsheng Song, Zi-An Li, Jan Caron, András Kovács, Huanfang Tian, Chiming Jin, Haifeng Du, Mingliang Tian, Jianqi Li, Jing Zhu, and Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski
Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 167204 – Published 19 April 2018
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Abstract

Whereas theoretical investigations have revealed the significant influence of magnetic surface and edge states on Skyrmonic spin texture in chiral magnets, experimental studies of such chiral states remain elusive. Here, we study chiral edge states in an FeGe nanostripe experimentally using off-axis electron holography. Our results reveal the magnetic-field-driven formation of chiral edge states and their penetration lengths at 95 and 240 K. We determine values of saturation magnetization MS by analyzing the projected in-plane magnetization distributions of helices and Skyrmions. Values of MS inferred for Skyrmions are lower by a few percent than those for helices. We attribute this difference to the presence of chiral surface states, which are predicted theoretically in a three-dimensional Skyrmion model. Our experiments provide direct quantitative measurements of magnetic chiral boundary states and highlight the applicability of state-of-the-art electron holography for the study of complex spin textures in nanostructures.

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  • Received 15 August 2017
  • Revised 13 December 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.167204

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Dongsheng Song1,3, Zi-An Li2,3,*, Jan Caron3, András Kovács3, Huanfang Tian2, Chiming Jin4, Haifeng Du4, Mingliang Tian4, Jianqi Li2, Jing Zhu1, and Rafal E. Dunin-Borkowski3

  • 1National Center for Electron Microscopy in Beijing, Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials (MOE) and The State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, 100084 Beijing, China
  • 2Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 100190 Beijing, China
  • 3Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons and Peter Grünberg Institute, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany
  • 4High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 230031 Anhui, China

  • *zali79@iphy.ac.cn

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Issue

Vol. 120, Iss. 16 — 20 April 2018

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