4. Complex oxides with tailored modulated spin textures

In this project the focus is on oxide heterostructures, where modulated textures arise due to inversion and time-reversal symmetry breaking at the interfaces. For this we work with La1-xSrxMnO3, SrRuO3 and BiFeO3. These materials, though widely studied for their magneto-transport and ferroelectricity, have not been investigated for properties that arise from the interplay between topology and correlation in a heterostructure. Pulsed laser deposition (PLD) is used for growing the oxide heterostructures. For La1-xSrxMnO3, a thrust will be to tailor the interface to attain perpendicular anisotropy by inducing compressive strain. It is expected that modulated spin textures at the interface will evolve by such strain engineering. Electric field modulation of the spin state (and texture) and their stability at the interface will be studied using the anomalous and topological Hall effect to understand the underlying spin texture. A key focus will be on investigating the different contributions to transport due to scattering at different spin (in)dependent potentials, specifically in these materials that have a non-constant Berry curvature in momentum space.

Team of supervising researchers: Tamalika Banerjee & Beatriz Noheda

PhD student: Job van Rijn