Oleg A. Tretiakov

Dynamics of domain walls in magnetic nanostrips.

We express the dynamics of domain walls in ferromagnetic nanowires in terms of collective coordinates, generalizing Thieles steady-state results. For weak external perturbations the dynamics is dominated by a few soft modes. The general approach is illustrated on the example of a vortex wall relevant to recent experiments with flat nanowires. A two-mode approximation gives a quantitatively accurate description of both the steady viscous motion of the wall in weak magnetic fields and its oscillatory behavior in moderately high fields above the Walker breakdown.

Static and Dynamical Properties of Antiferromagnetic Skyrmions in the Presence of Applied Current and Temperature

Skyrmions are topologically protected entities in magnetic materials which have the potential to be used in spintronics for information storage and processing. However, Skyrmions in ferromagnets have some intrinsic difficulties which must be overcome to use them for spintronic applications, such as the inability to move straight along current. We show that Skyrmions can also be stabilized and manipulated in antiferromagnetic materials. An antiferromagnetic Skyrmion is a compound topological object with a similar but of opposite sign spin texture on each sublattice, which, e.g., results in a complete cancellation of the Magnus force. We find that the composite nature of antiferromagnetic Skyrmions gives rise to different dynamical behavior due to both an applied current and temperature effects.

Vortices in thin ferromagnetic films and the skyrmion number

We point out that a peculiar annihilation of a vortex-antovortex pair observed numerically by Hertel and Schneider [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 177202 (2006)] represents the formation and subsequent decay of a skyrmion.

Current driven magnetization dynamics in ferromagnetic nanowires with a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction.

We study current-induced magnetization dynamics in a long thin ferromagnetic wire with a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI). We find a spiral domain wall configuration of the magnetization and obtain an analytical expression for the width of the domain wall as a function of the interaction strengths. Our findings show that above a certain value of DMI a domain wall configuration cannot exist in the wire. Below this value we determine the domain wall dynamics for small currents, and calculate the drift velocity of the domain wall along the wire. We show that the DMI suppresses the minimum value of current required to move the domain wall. Depending on its sign, the DMI increases or decreases the domain wall drift velocity.

Dynamics of a vortex domain wall in a magnetic nanostrip: application of the collective-coordinate approach

The motion of a vortex domain wall in a ferromagnetic strip of submicron width under the influence of an external magnetic field exhibits three distinct dynamical regimes. In a viscous regime at low fields the wall moves rigidly with a velocity proportional to the field. Above a critical field the viscous motion breaks down, giving way to oscillations accompanied by a slow drift of the wall. At still higher fields the drift velocity starts rising with the field again but with a much lower mobility

Holey topological thermoelectrics

dv/dH

Staggered dynamics in antiferromagnets by collective coordinates.

than in the viscous regime. To describe the dynamics of the wall, we use the method of collective coordinates that focuses on soft modes of the system. By retaining two soft modes, parametrized by the coordinates of the vortex core, we obtain a simple description of the wall dynamics at low and intermediate applied fields that applies to both the viscous and oscillatory regimes below and above the breakdown. The calculated dynamics agrees well with micromagnetic simulations at low and intermediate values of the driving field. In higher fields, additional modes become soft and the two-mode approximation is no longer sufficient. We explain some of the significant features of vortex-domain-wall motion in high fields through the inclusion of additional modes associated with the half antivortices on the strip edge.

Minimization of Ohmic losses for domain wall motion in a ferromagnetic nanowire.

We study the thermoelectric properties of three-dimensional topological insulators with many holes (or pores) in the bulk. We show that at high density of these holes, the thermoelectric figure of merit, ZT, can be large due to the contribution of the conducting surfaces and the suppressed phonon thermal conductivity. The maximum efficiency can be tuned by an induced gap in the surface states dispersion through tunneling or external magnetic fields. The large values of ZT, much higher than unity for reasonable parameters, make this system a strong candidate for applications in heat management of nanodevices, especially at low temperatures.

Spin Seebeck power generators

Antiferromagnets can be used to store and manipulate spin information, but the coupled dynamics of the staggered field and the magnetization are very complex. We present a theory which is conceptually much simpler and which uses collective coordinates to describe staggered field dynamics in antiferromagnetic textures. The theory includes effects from dissipation, external magnetic fields, as well as reactive and dissipative current-induced torques. We conclude that, at low frequencies and amplitudes, currents induce collective motion by means of dissipative rather than reactive torques. The dynamics of a one-dimensional domain wall, pinned at 90° at its ends, are described as a driven harmonic oscillator with a natural frequency inversely proportional to the length of the texture.

Spin Seebeck Power Conversion

We study current-induced domain-wall motion in a narrow ferromagnetic wire. We propose a way to move domain walls with a resonant time-dependent current which dramatically decreases the Ohmic losses in the wire and allows driving of the domain wall with higher speed without burning the wire. For any domain-wall velocity we find the time dependence of the current needed to minimize the Ohmic losses. Below a critical domain-wall velocity specified by the parameters of the wire the minimal Ohmic losses are achieved by dc current. Furthermore, we identify the wire parameters for which the losses reduction from its dc value is the most dramatic.