Chirality-dependent roughness of magnetic domain walls

Abstract

Dzyaloshinskii？Moriya interaction (DMI) plays a key role in the formation and stability of chiral magnetic objects, such as skyrmions and chiral domain-walls (DWs), which are used as building blocks of emerging high-density and high-speed devices. Here, we demonstrate that the DMI determines also the roughness of chiral DWs. Such DMI-dependent chiral roughness was observed from magnetic multilayer films of the Pt/Co/Pt heterostructure. Despite the stochastic nature of the DW roughness, the films clearly showed the roughness variation with respect to the DW chirality in balance with the DMI. The present analysis of the DW roughness offers a way to quantitatively determine the DMI-induced effective field as an essential parameter for the stability and dynamic characteristics of chiral DWs.