报告题目：Spin-orbitronics, a new direction for spintronics

报 告 人：Albert Fert，Nobel Laureate，Scientific Director of a joint laboratory of CNRS and company Thales

报告时间：2014年6月4日15:00

报告地点：金沙总站6165地址主楼接待厅

报告摘要：Classical spintronic devices use the exchange interaction between conduction electron spins and local spins in magnetic materials to create spin-polarized currents or to manipulate nanomagnets by spin transfer from spin-polarized currents. A novel direction of spintronics – that I call spin-orbitronics – rather exploits the spin-orbit coupling in nonmagnetic materials to generate or detect spin-polarized currents. This opens the way to spin devices made of only nonmagnetic materials and operated without magnetic fields. Spin-orbit coupling can also be used to create new types of topological magnetic objects such as the magnetic skyrmions. After a general introduction on spintronics, I will review recent advances in two directions of this field.

a) Nucleation, current-induced motion and pinning of individual skyrmions: I will focus on skyrmions induced in thin magnetic films by Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions at their interface with materials of large spin-orbit coupling and I will discuss their potential for applications.

b) Conversion between charge and spin current by the Spin Hall Effect and the coupling between spin and momentum in surface or interface states (Edelstein effect): I will describe recent experiments and examples of application to the fast current-induced motion of magnetic domain walls.