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The Helical Magnet MnSi: Skyrmions and Magnons
Version 1
: Received: 6 July 2018 / Approved: 6 July 2018 / Online: 6 July 2018 (15:59:52 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Georgii, R.; Weber, T. The Helical Magnet MnSi: Skyrmions and Magnons. Quantum Beam Sci. 2019, 3, 4. Georgii, R.; Weber, T. The Helical Magnet MnSi: Skyrmions and Magnons. Quantum Beam Sci. 2019, 3, 4.
Abstract
MnSi has played a major role since the late 1970s in developing the theory of helical magnets in non-centro symmetric materials showing Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interaction (DMI). With a long helimagnetic pitch of 175 \AA~as compared to the lattice d-spacing of 4.55\AA, it was ideal for performing neutron studies especially as large single crystals could be grown. In these studies under the application of a field of 180 mT perpendicular to Q, a so-called A-phase in the B-T phase diagram was found and interpreted as a rotation of the alignment of the magnetic helix away from the pinning axis. After the surprising discovery of the skyrmion lattice in the A-phase in 2009 much interest arose as it could be shown that the magnetic skyrmion lattice is topologically protected. Due to the rigidity of the skyrmionic lattice it is only loosely bound to the crystal lattice and therefore only relatively small current densities can already induce a motion of this lattice. Another very interesting aspect are the excitations in the spin system of MnSi. As the helimagnetic state is characterized by a long pitch of about 175 \AA, the associated characteristic excitations form a band structure due to Umklapp scattering and can only be observed at very small q with energies below 1 meV. We have investigated the the magnons in MnSi in the whole (B,T)-phase diagram starting in the single-k helimagnetic state by applying a small magnetic field B = 100 mT. This way, the complexity of the magnon spectrum is significantly reduced allowing a detailed comparison of the data with theory resulting in a full theoretical understanding of the spin system of MnSi in all its different magnetic phases.
Keywords
MnSi; helical magnet; skyrmion;magnons
Subject
Physical Sciences, Condensed Matter Physics
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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