Chiral magnetoresistance in Pt/Co/Pt zigzag wires

Published

March 20, 2017

Author(s)

Kyoung-Whan Kim, Yuxiang Yin, Dong-Soo Han, June-Seo Kim, Lavrijsen Reinoud, Kyung-Jin Lee, Seo--Won Lee, Hyun-Woo Lee, Henk Swagten, Bert Koopmans

Abstract

The Rashba effect leads to a chiral rotation of conduction spins while the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) fixes the chirality of the profile of local spins. We predict that these two spin systems interact with each other via s-d exchange, and results in a novel `chiral' magnetoresistance depending on the chirality of the local spin texture. We observe this magnetoresistance by measuring domain wall (DW) resistance in a uniquely designed Pt/Co/Pt zigzag wire, and by changing the chirality of the DW by applying an in-plane magnetic field. A chirality-dependent DW resistance is found, and a quantitative analysis shows a good agreement with a theory based on the Rashba model. Moreover, the DW resistance measurement allows us to independently determine the strength of the Rashba effect and the DMI simultaneously, and the result implies a possible correlation between the Rashba effect, the DMI, and the symmetric Heisenberg exchange.

Citation

Applied Physics Letters

Volume

110

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979031

Keywords

magnetoresistance, chirality, spin-orbit coupling, magnetic domain wall, domain wall resistance, symmetry breaking

Citation

Kim, K. , Yin, Y. , Han, D. , Kim, J. , Reinoud, L. , Lee, K. , Lee, S. , Lee, H. , Swagten, H. and Koopmans, B. (2017), Chiral magnetoresistance in Pt/Co/Pt zigzag wires, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4979031 (Accessed October 14, 2025)