Chiral magnetism: a geometric perspective

ORAL

Abstract

We recast the model of a chiral ferromagnet with the Dzyaloshinski-Moriya interaction as a Heisenberg model with nontrivial spin parallel transport. Within this theoretical framework, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya vectors take the role of a background SO(3) gauge field. A combination of analytical and numerical arguments suggests that the ground state of this gauged Heisenberg model in 2 spatial dimensions is a hexagonal skyrmion crystal in a wide range of applied magnetic fields.

*D.H. and O.T. have been supported by the US DOE Basic EnergySciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Award DE-SC0019331. This work has been done in part at the Aspen Center for Physics supported by the US NSF GrantPHY-1607611 and at the Kavli Institute for TheoreticalPhysics, supported by the US NSF Grant PHY-1748958. V.S. thanks the Max Planck Institute for Mathematicsin the Sciences, Leipzig, for hospitality and acknowledges support by the Leverhulme grant RPG-2018-438.

–

Presenters

  • Daniel Hill

    • University of California, Los Angeles
    • Johns Hopkins University

Authors

  • Daniel Hill

    • University of California, Los Angeles
    • Johns Hopkins University

  • Oleg Tchernyshyov

    • Johns Hopkins University
    • Institute for Quantum Matter and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University

  • Valeriy Slastikov

    • University of Bristol