Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

American Institute of Physics, Applied Physics Letters, 17(120), 2022

DOI: 10.1063/5.0089355

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Observation of domain structure in non-collinear antiferromagnetic Mn3Sn thin films by magneto-optical Kerr effect

This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

Full text: Unavailable

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Orange circle
Published version: archiving restricted
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

We perform hysteresis-loop measurement and domain imaging for (11¯00)-oriented D019-Mn3+xSn1-x (−0.11≤x≤0.14) thin films using the magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) and compare it with the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) measurement. We obtain a large Kerr rotation angle of 10 mdeg, comparable with bulk single-crystal Mn3Sn. The composition x dependence of AHE and MOKE shows a similar trend, suggesting the same origin, i.e., the non-vanishing Berry curvature in the momentum space. Magnetic domain observation at the saturated state shows that x dependence of AHE and MOKE is explained by the amount of the reversible area that crucially depends on the crystalline structure of the film. Furthermore, in-depth observation of the reversal process reveals that the reversal starts with nucleation of sub-micrometer-scale domains dispersed in the film, followed by domain expansion, where the domain wall preferentially propagates along the [112¯0] direction. Our study provides a basic understanding of the spatial evolution of the reversal of the chiral-spin structure in non-collinear antiferromagnetic thin films.