Interfacial tuning of chiral magnetic interactions for large topological Hall effects in LaMnO3/SrIrO3 heterostructures

Abstract

Chiral interactions in magnetic systems can give rise to rich physics manifested, for example, as nontrivial spin textures. The foremost interaction responsible for chiral magnetism is the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), resulting from inversion symmetry breaking in the presence of strong spin-orbit coupling. However, the atomistic origin of DMIs and their relationship to emergent electrodynamic phenomena, such as topological Hall effect (THE), remain unclear. Here, we investigate the role of interfacial DMIs in 3d–5d transition metal-oxide-based LaMnO3/SrIrO3 superlattices on THE from a chiral spin texture. By additively engineering the interfacial inversion symmetry with atomic-scale precision, we directly link the competition between interfacial collinear ferromagnetic interactions and DMIs to an enhanced THE. The ability to control the DMI and resulting THE points to a pathway for harnessing interfacial structures to maximize the density of chiral spin textures useful for developing high-density information storage and quantum magnets for quantum information science.