Stable humplike Hall effect and noncoplanar spin textures in SrRuO3 ultrathin films

Abstract

We observed a humplike feature in Hall effects of SrRuO3 ultrathin films, and systematically investigated it by controlling thicknesses, temperatures and magnetic fields. The humplike feature is extremely stable, even surviving as a magnetic field is tilted by as much as 85 degrees. Based on the atomic-level structural analysis of a SrRuO3 ultrathin film with a theoretical calculation, we reveal that atomic rumplings at the thin-film surface enhance Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which can generate stable chiral spin textures and a humplike Hall effect. Moreover, temperature dependent resonant x-ray measurements at the Ru L edge under a magnetic field showed that the intensity modulation of unexpected peaks was correlated with the hump region in the Hall effect. We verify that the two-dimensional property of ultrathin films generates stable noncoplanar spin textures having a magnetic order in a ferromagnetic oxide material.