Experimental confirmation of exchange-driven DMI

Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is a key ingredient which allows to obtain chiral non-collinear magnetic textures, e.g. chiral domain walls and skyrmions. The conventional spin-orbit induced DMI emerges in gyrotropic crystals or at the interfaces. Therefore, tailoring of DMI is done by optimizing materials. A viable alternative to the material screening approach relies on the use of geometrically broken symmetries of conventional materials, where local geometrical curvatures generate effective exchange-induced DMI.
Here, we provide the very first experimental confirmation of the existence of the curvature-induced DMI in a Permalloy parabolic nanostripe. By analyzing the evolution of transversal domain wall (DW) [1] under the influence of external field we correlate the depinning field of the DW with the curvature-induced DMI field. We put forth a framework to analyze this field and assess the strength of the effective DMI.
[1] O. Volkov et. al, Physica Status Solidi – Rapid Research Letters, 1800309 (2018).