Phenomenology of chiral damping in noncentrosymmetric magnets

Abstract

A phenomenology of magnetic chiral damping is proposed in the context of magnetic materials lacking inversion symmetry. We show that the magnetic damping tensor acquires a component linear in magnetization gradient in the form of Lifshitz invariants. We propose different microscopic mechanisms that can produce such a damping in ferromagnetic metals, among which local spin pumping in the presence of an anomalous Hall effect and an effective “s-d” Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya antisymmetric exchange. The implication of this chiral damping in terms of domain-wall motion is investigated in the flow and creep regimes.