Controlling Antiferromagnetic Vortices in Van der Waals Materials.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo and the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science have confirmed that a specific non-coplanar antiferromagnetic order characterized by scalar spin chirality could elicit a large and spontaneous topological Hall effect in van der Waals materials. The effect could originate from the scalar spin chirality of the compounds that the team examined, which produce a fictitious magnetic field. This phenomenon enables the electrical readout of the antiferromagnetic domains, and it suggests that non-coplanar antiferromagnets may be utilized as a novel information medium.