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  • Open Access

Topological magnetic textures in magnetic topological insulators

Nisarga Paul1,2 and Liang Fu2

  • 1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
  • 2Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033173 – Published 20 August, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.033173

Abstract

The surfaces of intrinsic magnetic topological insulators (TIs) host magnetic moments exchange-coupled to Dirac electrons. We study the magnetic phases arising from tuning the electron density using variational and exact diagonalization approaches. In the dilute limit, we find that magnetic skyrmions are formed, which bind to electrons, leading to a skyrmion Wigner crystal phase while at higher densities spin spirals accompanied by chiral one-dimensional channels of electrons are formed. The binding of electrons to textures raises the possibility of manipulating textures with electrostatic gating. We determine the phase diagram capturing the competition of intrinsic spin-spin interactions and carrier density and comment on the possible application to experiments in magnetic TIs and spintronic devices such as skyrmion-based memory.

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Twisted magnetic topological insulators

Chao-Kai Li, Xu-Ping Yao, and Gang Chen
Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033156 (2021)

Article Text

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033173– Published 20 August, 2021
  • Received 10 March 2021
  • Accepted 7 July 2021
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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