Chiral domain walls of Mn$_3$Sn and their memory

Abstract

Magnetic domain walls are topological solitons whose internal structure is set by competing energies which sculpt them. In common ferromagnets, domain walls are known to be of either Bloch or N\'eel types. Little is established in the case of Mn$_3$Sn, a triangular antiferromagnet with a large room-temperature anomalous Hall effect, where domain nucleation is triggered by a well-defined threshold magnetic field. Here, we show that the domain walls of this system generate an additional contribution to the Hall conductivity tensor and a transverse magnetization. The former is an electric field lying in the same plane with the magnetic field and electric current and therefore a planar Hall effect. We demonstrate that in-plane rotation of spins inside the domain wall would explain both observations and the clockwise or anticlockwise chirality of the walls depends on the history of the field orientation and can be controlled.