Joerg Wunderlich
Magnetic data storage is based on the switching and detection of energetically degenerate ferromagnetic ground states with reversed magnetization separated by a sufficiently high energy barrier to maintain long-term non-volatility of the stored data. Therefore, exploiting the many advantages of zero net moment antiferromagnets for fast and energy-efficient magnetic storage will also rely on the realization of switching and detecting stable antiferromagnetic states with reversed magnetic order.
In this talk, we discuss that switching between nonvolatile stable states with opposite Néel vector orientations and their detection in collinear antiferromagnetic systems with combined spatial inversion and time-reversal (PT) symmetry can be realized by generating relativistic effective spin-orbit fields and by detecting higher-order magneto-transport responses. As a model system, we consider a fully compensated synthetic antiferromagnet (SAF) with engineered PT symmetry and an natural equivalent, the antiferromagnet CuMnAs.
Besides just storing "0"-s or "1"-s corresponding to two fully polarized magnetic states with reversed Néel vectors, we also show that partial switching enables the realization of nonvolatile memristor type of devices.