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Topological Defects in Nanostructures—Chiral Domain Walls and Skyrmions

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Topological Structures in Ferroic Materials

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Materials Science ((SSMATERIALS,volume 228))

Abstract

In this chapter, spin structures with particular topologies in confined geometries are presented. Domain walls in nanowires exhibit a spin structure that depends on the material and geometry while in discs Skyrmions can be stabilized by different competing interactions. The topologies of these spin structures can be characterized by a Skyrmion or Winding number that governs the dynamics and stability.

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Acknowledgments

A number of students, postdocs and colleagues have contributed to these experiments to all of which we are indebted. In particular we would like to acknowledge T. Schulz, S.-J. Noh, T. Zacke, R. Lo Conte and G. Karnad for much of the experimental and simulations work carried out.

A large part of the work was performed within the EU projects MAGWIRE (FP7-ICT-2009-5 257707), WALL (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN 608031) the European Research Council Starting Independent Researcher Grant MASPIC (No. ERC-2007-StG 208162) and furthermore the Graduate School of Excellence “Materials Science in Mainz” (No. GSC266), the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the State Research Center of Innovative and Emerging Materials. We thank O. Tchernychyov and E. Martinez for valuable discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128, Mainz, Germany

    Benjamin Krüger

  2. Institute of Physics and Materials Science in Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 55128, Mainz, Germany

    Mathias Kläui

Authors
  1. Benjamin Krüger
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  2. Mathias Kläui
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin Krüger .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School Mat Sci. Eng., University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Jan Seidel

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Krüger, B., Kläui, M. (2016). Topological Defects in Nanostructures—Chiral Domain Walls and Skyrmions. In: Seidel, J. (eds) Topological Structures in Ferroic Materials. Springer Series in Materials Science, vol 228. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25301-5_9

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