Stable hump-like Hall effect and non-coplanar spin textures in SrRuO$_3$ ultrathin film

Abstract

We observed a hump-like feature in Hall effects of SrRuO$_3$ ultrathin films, and systematically investigated it with controlling thicknesses, temperatures and magnetic fields. The hump-like feature is extremely stable, even surviving as a magnetic field is tilted by as much as 85$^\circ$. Based on the atomic-level structural analysis of a SrRuO$_3$ ultrathin film with a theoretical calculation, we reveal that atomic rumplings at the thin-film surface enhance Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, which can generate stable chiral spin textures and a hump-like Hall effect. Moreover, temperature dependent resonant X-ray measurements at Ru L-edge under a magnetic field showed that the intensity modulation of unexpected peaks was correlated with the hump region in the Hall effect. We verify that the two-dimensional property of ultrathin films generates stable non-coplanar spin textures having a magnetic order in a ferromagnetic oxide material.