Measuring interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in ultrathin magnetic films

Abstract

In magnetically ordered systems the Heisenberg exchange interaction between neighboring spins favors collinear alignment such as that seen in ferromagnets and antiferromagnets. The inclusion of antisymmetric exchange, also known as the Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya interaction (DMI), promotes an orthogonal arrangement between spins and is the subject of this review. The DMI interaction is responsible for chiral magnetism, spin-textured skyrmions, and magnetoelectric effects in multiferroic materials. The review, organized by measurement method, is focused on experiments that determine the DMI associated with thin film interfaces occurring in a variety of samples.