The antiferromagnetic semi-Heusler compound CuMnSb has been investigated under high pressure by electrical resistivity and angle dispersive synchrotron x-ray diffraction measurements to 53 and 36 GPa, respectively. The N\'eel temperature at $\ensuremath{\sim}50$ K is found to initially increase rapidly with pressure, reaching 83 K at 7 GPa. However, near 8 GPa at ambient temperature a sluggish first-order structural transition begins from a semimetallic cubic phase to a likely semimetallic tetragonal phase; thermal cycling to $355{\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}}^{\ensuremath{\circ}}\mathrm{C}$ at 9.6 GPa serves to complete the transition. In the tetragonal phase no sign of magnetic ordering is visible in the resistivity $R(T)$ over the measured temperature range 4--295 K. This suggests that magnetic ordering may have shifted to temperatures well above ambient. Indeed, density functional calculations find the magnetic ground state in the tetragonal phase to be antiferromagnetic. Following decompression to 1 bar at ambient temperature, the high-pressure tetragonal phase is retained.
CoFe single and multi-layer systems are deposited by a radio-frequency sputter process. Thickness, roughness, morphology, texture and internal stress state of the layers are determined by X-ray reflectometry, transmission electron microscopy, and diffraction methods. The texture and the internal stress of the layers depend strongly on the parameters of the sputter process. The magnetic properties of the layers are determined from hysteresis curve measurements and magneto-optical Kerr microscopy. A strong correlation between the texture, the internal stress, and the magnetic properties of the CoFe layers is observed.
Time-resolved x-ray imaging shows that the magnetization dynamics of a micron-sized pattern containing a ferromagnetic vortex is determined by its handedness, or chirality. The out-of-plane magnetization in the nanometer-scale vortex core induces a three-dimensional handedness in the planar magnetic structure, leading to a precessional motion of the core parallel to a subnanosecond field pulse. The core velocity was an order of magnitude higher than expected from the static susceptibility. These results demonstrate that handedness, already well known to be important in biological systems, plays an important role in the dynamics of microscopic magnets.
Tuning the electronic properties of transition‐metal and rare‐earth compounds by virtue of changes of the crystallographic lattice constants offers controlled access to new forms of order. The development of tungsten carbide (WC) and moissanite Bridgman cells conceived for studies of the electrical resistivity up to 10 GPa, as well as bespoke diamond anvil cells (DACs) developed for neutron depolarization studies up to 20 GPa is reviewed. For the DACs, the applied pressure changes as a function of temperature in quantitative agreement with the thermal expansion of the pressure cell. A setup is described that is based on focusing neutron guides for measurements of the depolarization of a neutron beam by samples in a DAC. The technical progress is illustrated in terms of three examples. Measurements of the resistivity and neutron depolarization provide evidence of ferromagnetic order in SrRuO 3 up to 14 GPa close to a putative quantum phase transition. Combining hydrostatic, uniaxial, and quasi‐hydrostatic pressure, the emergence of incipient superconductivity in CrB 2 is observed. The temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity in is consistent with emergent Kondo correlations and an enhanced coupling of magneto‐elastic excitations with the conduction electrons at low and intermediate temperatures, respectively.
Magnetic skyrmions in chiral magnets are nanoscale, topologically protected magnetization swirls that are promising candidates for spintronics memory carriers. Therefore, observing and manipulating the skyrmion state on the surface level of the materials are of great importance for future applications. Here, we report a controlled way of creating a multidomain skyrmion state near the surface of a Cu2OSeO3 single crystal, observed by soft resonant elastic X-ray scattering. This technique is an ideal tool to probe the magnetic order at the L3 edge of 3d metal compounds giving an average depth sensitivity of ∼50 nm. The single-domain 6-fold-symmetric skyrmion lattice can be broken up into domains, overcoming the propagation directions imposed by the cubic anisotropy by applying the magnetic field in directions deviating from the major cubic axes. Our findings open the door to a new way to manipulate and engineer the skyrmion state locally on the surface or on the level of individual skyrmions, which will enable applications in the future.
We report an experimental study of the emergence of non-trivial topological winding and long-range order across the paramagnetic to skyrmion lattice transition in the transition metal helimagnet MnSi. Combining measurements of the susceptibility with small angle neutron scattering, neutron resonance spin echo spectroscopy and all-electrical microwave spectroscopy, we find evidence of skyrmion textures in the paramagnetic state exceeding $10^3$Awith lifetimes above several 10$^{-9}$s. Our experimental findings establish that the paramagnetic to skyrmion lattice transition in MnSi is well-described by the Landau soft-mode mechanism of weak crystallization, originally proposed in the context of the liquid to crystal transition. As a key aspect of this theoretical model, the modulation-vectors of periodic small amplitude components of the magnetization form triangles that add to zero. In excellent agreement with our experimental findings, these triangles of the modulation-vectors entail the presence of the non-trivial topological winding of skyrmions already in the paramagnetic state of MnSi when approaching the skyrmion lattice transition.
Transition metal-rare earth (TM-RE) Fe/Tb-multilayer systems have been known to show exchange-bias-like shifts in the form of double hysteresis loop (DHL) along and opposite to the field cooling axis. Planar domain walls, with opposite handedness at the interfaces, are held responsible for such DHL. Here, we report on the formation of nanoparticulated Fe layers in the Cu-matrix within a Fe-Cu/Tb multilayer and their eventual low-temperature characteristics. AC susceptibility measurements indicate that these diluted magnetic clusters have a superspin-glass-type of freezing behavior. Eventually, this Fe-cluster/Tb interlayer interaction, which is conjectured to be mediated by the pinned moments within the individual clusters, has helped in increasing the exchange bias field in the system to a high value of $\ensuremath{\approx}1.3$ kOe, which gradually vanishes around 50 K. Polarized neutron reflectivity confirms a very strong antiferromagnetic (AF) coupling between the individual layers. The magnitude of the magnetic moment of each of the individual Tb or Fe-Cu layer remains similar, but due to the strong AF-coupling at the interfaces, the entire ferrimagnetic Fe-Cu/Tb entity flips its direction at a compensation field of around 3.7 kOe. This study shows that magnetic dilution can be an effective way to manipulate the possible domain walls or the clusters in TM and thereby the exchange bias in TM-RE systems.
