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  1. To enable the practical use of skyrmion-based devices, it is essential to achieve a balance between energy efficiency and thermal stability while also ensuring reliable electrical detection against noise. Understanding how a skyrmion interacts with material disorder and external perturbations is thus essential. Here, we investigate the electronic noise of a single skyrmion under the influence of thermal fluctuations and spin currents in a magnetic thin film. We detect the thermally induced noise with a 1/ f γ signature in the strong pinning regime but a random telegraph noise in the intermediate pinning regime. Both the thermally dominated and current induced telegraph like signals are detected in the weak pinning regime. Our results provide a comprehensive electronic noise picture of a single skyrmion, demonstrating the potential of noise fluctuation as a valuable tool for characterizing the pinning condition of a skyrmion. These insights could also aid in the development of low-noise and reliable skyrmion-based devices. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available September 1, 2024
  2. Spin textures, such as magnetic domain walls and skyrmions, have the potential to revolutionize electronic devices by encoding information bits. Although recent advancements in ferromagnetic films have led to promising device prototypes, their widespread implementation has been hindered by material-related drawbacks. Antiferromagnetic spin textures, however, offer a solution to many of these limitations, paving the way for faster, smaller, more energy-efficient, and more robust electronics. The functionality of synthetic antiferromagnets, comprised of two or more magnetic layers separated by spacers, may be easily manipulated by making use of different materials as well as interface engineering. In this Perspective article, we examine the challenges and opportunities presented by spin textures in synthetic antiferromagnets and propose possible directions and prospects for future research in this burgeoning field. 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 1, 2024
  3. Free, publicly-accessible full text available July 17, 2024
  4. Abstract

    Magnetocapacitance (MC) effect has been observed in systems where both symmetries of time-reversal and space-inversion are broken, for examples, in multiferroic materials and spintronic devices. The effect has received increasing attention due to its interesting physics and the prospect of applications. Recently, a large tunnel magnetocapacitance (TMC) of 332% at room temperature was reported using MgO-based (001)-textured magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). Here, we report further enhancement in TMC beyond 420% at room temperature using epitaxial MTJs with an MgAl2O4(001) barrier with a cation-disordered spinel structure. This large TMC is partially caused by the high effective tunneling spin polarization, resulted from the excellent lattice matching between the Fe electrodes and the MgAl2O4barrier. The epitaxial nature of this MTJ system sports an enhanced spin-dependent coherent tunneling effect. Among other factors leading to the large TMC are the appearance of the spin capacitance, the large barrier height, and the suppression of spin flipping through the MgAl2O4barrier. We explain the observed TMC by the Debye-Fröhlich modelled calculation incorporating Zhang-sigmoid formula, parabolic barrier approximation, and spin-dependent drift diffusion model. Furthermore, we predict a 1000% TMC in MTJs with a spin polarization of 0.8. These experimental and theoretical findings provide a deeper understanding on the intrinsic mechanism of the TMC effect. New applications based on large TMC may become possible in spintronics, such as multi-value memories, spin logic devices, magnetic sensors, and neuromorphic computing.

     
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  5. A bstract In this work, we use Ising chain and Kitaev chain to check the validity of an earlier proposal in arXiv:2011.02859 that enriched fusion (higher) categories provide a unified categorical description of all gapped/gapless quantum liquid phases, including symmetry-breaking phases, topological orders, SPT/SET orders and CFT-type gapless quantum phases. In particular, we show explicitly that, in each gapped phase realized by these two models, the spacetime observables form a fusion category enriched in a braided fusion category such that its monoidal center is trivial. We also study the categorical descriptions of the boundaries of these models. In the end, we obtain a classification of and the categorical descriptions of all 1-dimensional (spatial dimension) gapped quantum phases with a bosonic/fermionic finite onsite symmetry. 
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  6. Magnetic domain structures are active electron transport agents and can be used to induce large magnetoresistance (MR), particularly in half-metallic solids. We have studied the excess resistance induced by a single magnetic domain wall in a one-dimensional half-metallic CrO 2 nanoscale conductor with a built-in constriction whose channel width ( d ) ranges from 30 to 200 nm. We observed that the domain wall-induced MR is enhanced by 70 fold when d decreases from 200 nm to 30 nm. We speculate that the enhancement is due to the increased domain wall resistance (DWR) and the extra contribution of ballistic magnetoresistance (BMR). We have uncovered a large size effect of d on the MR induced by the domain wall, which scales with d as d −1.87±0.32 . Accordingly, we predict that the MR ratio of a simple CrO 2 nanowire impregnated with a constriction at a 150 nm 2 cross-section could reach 100%. This large MR far exceeds that of a conventional ferromagnetic nanowire, confirming the role of half metallicity on enhanced magneto-transport. 
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  7. Abstract

    Magnetic skyrmions are of great interest to both fundamental research and applications in post-von-Neumann computing devices. The successful implementation of skyrmionic devices requires functionalities of skyrmions with effective controls. Here we show that the local dynamics of skyrmions, in contrast to the global dynamics of a skyrmion as a whole, can be introduced to provide effective functionalities for versatile computing. A single skyrmion interacting with local pinning centres under thermal effects can fluctuate in time and switch between a small-skyrmion and a large-skyrmion state, thereby serving as a robust true random number generator for probabilistic computing. Moreover, neighbouring skyrmions exhibit an anti-correlated coupling in their fluctuation dynamics. Both the switching probability and the dynamic coupling strength can be tuned by modifying the applied magnetic field and spin current. Our results could lead to progress in developing magnetic skyrmionic devices with high tunability and efficient controls.

     
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