Guiding Spin Spirals by Strain

Guiding Spin Spirals by Local Uniaxial Strain Relief.

Pin-Jui Hsu, Aurore Finco, Lorenz Schmidt, André Kubetzka, Kirsten von Bergmann, and Roland Wiesendanger

Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 017201 (2016)

(a) Overview SP-STM topography image of the spin spiral in the Fe DL and the nanoskyrmion lattice in the Fe ML; the zigzag shape of the spin spiral wave fronts with an angle of θ∼154° is indicated (measurement parameters: U=+1.0  V, I=1  nA, T=4.8  K). (b) Sketch of the magnetic state of the reconstructed Fe DL, as deduced from the SP-STM measurements. (c),(d) SP-STM topography images of the zigzag spin spiral measured with an out-of-plane and in-plane spin-sensitive tip, respectively. The corresponding SP-STM simulations are in the insets