Collective skyrmion motion under the influence of an additional interfacial spin-transfer torque

Abstract

Here we study the effect of an additional interfacial spin-transfer torque, as well as the well established spin-orbit torque and bulk spin-transfer torque, on skyrmion collections - group of skyrmions dense enough that they are not isolated from on another - in ultrathin heavy metal / ferromagnetic multilayers, by comparing modelling with experimental results. Using a skyrmion collection with a range of skyrmion diameters and landscape disorder, we study the dependence of the skyrmion Hall angle on diameter and velocity, as well as the velocity as a function of diameter. We show the experimental results are in good agreement with modelling when including the interfacial spin-transfer torque, and cannot be reproduced by using the spin-orbit torque alone. We also show that for skyrmion collections the velocity is approximately independent of diameter, in marked contrast to the motion of isolated skyrmions, as the group of skyrmions move together at an average group velocity. Moreover, the calculated skyrmion velocities are comparable to those obtained in experiments when the interfacial spin-transfer torque in included, whilst modelling using the spin-orbit torque alone shows large discrepancies with the experimental data. Our results thus show the significance of the interfacial spin-transfer torque in ultrathin magnetic multilayers, which is of similar strength to the spin-orbit torque, and both significantly larger than the bulk spin-transfer torque. Due to the good agreement with experiments, we conclude that the interfacial spin-transfer torque should be included in numerical modelling for correct reproduction of experimental results.