posted on 2018-02-08, 00:00authored byChirag Garg, Aakash Pushp, See-Hun Yang, Timothy Phung, Brian P. Hughes, Charles Rettner, Stuart S. P. Parkin
Recent
developments in spin–orbit torques allow for highly
efficient current-driven domain wall (DW) motion in nanowires with
perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. Here, we show that chiral DWs can
be driven into nonequilibrium states that can persist over tens of
nanoseconds in Y-shaped magnetic nanowire junctions that have an input
and two symmetric outputs. A single DW that is injected into the input
splits and travels at very different velocities in the two output
branches until it reaches its steady-state velocity. We find that
this is due to the disparity between the fast temporal evolution of
the spin current derived spin–orbit torque and a much-slower
temporal evolution of the DMI-derived torque. Changing the DW polarity
inverts the velocity asymmetry in the two output branches, a property
that we use to demonstrate the sorting of domains.