Interfacial exchange coupling induced chiral symmetry-breaking of Spin-Orbit effects

Abstract

We demonstrate that the interfacial exchange coupling in ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (FM/AFM) systems induces symmetry-breaking of the Spin-Orbit (SO) effects. This has been done by studying the field and angle dependencies of anisotropic magnetoresistance and vectorialresolved magnetization hysteresis loops, measured simultaneously and reproduced with numerical simulations. We show how the induced unidirectional magnetic anisotropy at the FM/AFM interface results in strong asymmetric transport behaviors, which are chiral around the magnetization hard-axis direction. Similar asymmetric features are anticipated in other SO-driven phenomena.