Current induced torques and interfacial spin-orbit coupling: Semiclassical modeling
Type
ArticleKAUST Department
Core LabsMaterial Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Spintronics Theory Group
Date
2013-05-07Preprint Posting Date
2013-01-18Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/552865
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
In bilayer nanowires consisting of a ferromagnetic layer and a nonmagnetic layer with strong spin-orbit coupling, currents create torques on the magnetization beyond those found in simple ferromagnetic nanowires. The resulting magnetic dynamics appear to require torques that can be separated into two terms, dampinglike and fieldlike. The dampinglike torque is typically derived from models describing the bulk spin Hall effect and the spin transfer torque, and the fieldlike torque is typically derived from a Rashba model describing interfacial spin-orbit coupling. We derive a model based on the Boltzmann equation that unifies these approaches. We also consider an approximation to the Boltzmann equation, the drift-diffusion model, that qualitatively reproduces the behavior, but quantitatively differs in some regimes. We show that the Boltzmann equation with physically reasonable parameters can match the torques for any particular sample, but in some cases, it fails to describe the experimentally observed thickness dependencies.Citation
Current induced torques and interfacial spin-orbit coupling: Semiclassical modeling 2013, 87 (17) Physical Review BPublisher
American Physical Society (APS)Journal
Physical Review BarXiv
1301.4513ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1103/PhysRevB.87.174411