Asymmetric reversal and quantized helical modes in ultrathin magnetic nanotubes with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
Phys. Rev. B 114, 034408 – Published 6 July, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/gwp3-19n5
Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) curvilinear nanomagnetism is an emerging field that has gained attention owing to modern advances in material engineering. Current experimental techniques now enable the fabrication of intricate ferromagnetic systems with 3D geometries, where curvature can induce asymmetry in magnon propagation and ultrafast chiral domain-wall dynamics. This paper reports on the formation and stability of conical-helix magnetic textures in thin ferromagnetic cylindrical nanotubes with interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) and radial magnetic anisotropy. It is found that geometry imposes a natural quantization of the helix wavelength along the azimuthal direction. The sign of the DMI strength () dictates the preferred handedness of the magnetization around the tube's circumference, leading to a notable asymmetry in the nucleation modes with respect to , a curvature effect particularly pronounced at smaller radii. Finite-element micromagnetic simulations support the analytical predictions, showing how the magnon instability of the saturated state, in which the frequency of a particular mode vanishes at a critical field, correlates to the nucleation of the predicted magnetic textures at those fields. These findings provide guidelines for tailoring helical textures in ferromagnetic nanotubes with defined chirality, offering experimentally testable predictions for applications in spintronics, and a framework that can be extended to more complex curved three-dimensional magnetic nanostructures.
