A strategy for fast and precise control of polarity and chirality in magnetic vortices

Abstract

Magnetic vortices hold great promise for advanced information storage applications due to their quartet degenerate states and high topological stability. The key to their application lies on meticulous control of its polarity and chirality, which traditionally relies on magnetic fields, currents, and spin waves. However, the vortex core’s intrinsic precession under these stimuli hampers fast switching of the polarity and chirality. Here, we demonstrate a fast and precise control of polarity and chirality in magnetic vortices using combined femtosecond (fs) laser and tiny magnetic fields via micromagnetic simulations on Permalloy nanodisks. The fs laser pulse induces an ultrafast quench effect to establish the initial paramagnetic state, while the simultaneously applied magnetic fields precisely target the final vortex structure. Intriguingly, a 110 mT out-of-plane field and a 7 mT in-plane circular field are sufficient to realize precise control of the polarity and chirality on sub-nanosecond time scale, respectively, which are much lower than that of the previous work. Our approach guarantees fast and reliable switching of magnetic vortex polarity and chirality, paving the groundwork for a high-speed quaternary data storage and contributing a novel perspective to the fundamentals of spintronics.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

magnetic vortex / chirality switching / polarity switching / femtosecond laser quenching / micromagnetic simulation

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Declarations

The authors declare that they have no competing interests and there are no conflicts.

Author contributions

X. F. conceived the research project. C. L. and X. H. performed the simulations. C. L. proceeded with data analysis. C. L. wrote the manuscript with input from Z. L., X. C., and X. F.. All authors contributed to the discussion and revision of the manuscript.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

Electronic supplementary materials

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.15302/frontphys.2025.022201.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFA0309300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 12127803 and 12304146), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2023M741828), Science and Technology Projects in Guangzhou (Grant No. 202201000008), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (Grant Nos. 2021B1515120047 and 2023B1515020112), the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (Grant No. 20JCJQJC00210), the 111 Project (Grant No. B23045), and the “Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities”, Nankai University (Grant Nos. 63213040, C029211101, C02922101, ZB22000104, DK2300010207, 63243194, and 9242000728).

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