Imaging Topological Spin Structures Using Light-Polarization and Magnetic Microscopy

Till Lenz1, Georgios Chatzidrosos1, Zhiyuan Wang1, Lykourgos Bougas2, Yannick Dumeige1, Arne Wickenbrock1, Nico Kerber2, Jakub Zázvorka2,4, Fabian Kammerbauer2, Mathias Kläui2, Zeeshawn Kazi5, Kai-Mei C. Fu1,5,6, Kohei M. Itoh7, Hideyuki Watanabe8, and Dmitry Budker1,9

1Helmholtz Institut Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany
2Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany
3Université de Rennes, CNRS, Institut FOTON UMR 6082, Lannion, France
4Institute of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague 121 16, Czech Republic
5Physics Department, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
6Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105, USA
7Spintronics Research Center, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama 223-8522, Japan
8Device Technology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, 1-1-1 Umezono, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan
9Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA

 

Ongoing research activities focus on increasing the understanding of spins and charges in magnetic systems with the aim to discover and fabricate smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient magnetic technologies. The success of these research activities relies, apart from advances in theory, on sensitive probes. Here, we present an imaging technology that combines magnetic-moment detection via the magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE) with diamond-based imaging of the generated magnetic stray field. With this we image magnetic stripe domains both with MOKE and diamond-based magnetic-field imaging and compare the obtained images[1].

 

Fig.1. (a) MOKE image of stripe domains in multilayered ferromagnetic sample. (b)Diamond based imaging of  the resulting magnetic fields generated from the sample. (c) Diamond (red) and MOKE (green) images overlapped[1].

 

References
[1] Lenz et al. ”Imaging Topological Spin Structures Using Light-Polarization and Magnetic Microscopy”, Physical Review Applied, 2021 Feb. 17;  15, 024040.