%0 Journal Article
%A Han, Dong-Soo
%A Lee, Kyujoon
%A Hanke, Jan-Philipp
%A Mokrousov, Yuriy
%A Kim, Kyoung-Whan
%A Yoo, Woosuk
%A van Hees, Youri L. W.
%A Kim, Tae-Wan
%A Lavrijsen, Reinoud
%A You, Chun-Yeol
%A Swagten, Henk J. M.
%A Jung, Myung-Hwa
%A Kläui, Mathias
%T Long-range chiral exchange interaction in synthetic antiferromagnets
%J Nature materials
%V 18
%@ 1476-4660
%C Basingstoke
%I Nature Publishing Group
%M FZJ-2019-03371
%P 703–708
%D 2019
%X The exchange interaction governs static and dynamic magnetism. This fundamental interaction comes in two flavours—symmetric and antisymmetric. The symmetric interaction leads to ferro- and antiferromagnetism, and the antisymmetric interaction has attracted significant interest owing to its major role in promoting topologically non-trivial spin textures that promise fast, energy-efficient devices. So far, the antisymmetric exchange interaction has been found to be rather short ranged and limited to a single magnetic layer. Here we report a long-range antisymmetric interlayer exchange interaction in perpendicularly magnetized synthetic antiferromagnets with parallel and antiparallel magnetization alignments. Asymmetric hysteresis loops under an in-plane field reveal a unidirectional and chiral nature of this interaction, which results in canted magnetic structures. We explain our results by considering spin–orbit coupling combined with reduced symmetry in multilayers. Our discovery of a long-range chiral interaction provides an additional handle to engineer magnetic structures and could enable three-dimensional topological structures.
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)16
%9 Journal Article
%$ pmid:31160801
%U <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000472020800015
%R 10.1038/s41563-019-0370-z
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/863281