[en] The nanoscopic magnetic texture forming in a monolayer of iron on the (111) surface of iridium, Fe/Ir(111), is spatially modulated and uniaxially incommensurate with respect to the crystallographic periodicities. As a consequence, a low-energy magnetic excitation is expected that corresponds to the sliding of the texture along the incommensurate direction, i.e., a phason mode, which we explicitly confirm with atomistic spin simulations. Using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM), we succeed to observe this phason mode experimentally. It can be excited by the STM tip, which leads to a random telegraph noise in the tunneling current that we attribute to the presence of two minima in the phason potential due to the presence of disorder in our sample. This provides the prospect of a floating phase in cleaner samples and, potentially, a commensurate-incommensurate transition as a function of external control parameters.
Disciplines :
Physics
Author, co-author :
Yang, Hung-Hsiang; Physikalisches Institut, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Desplat, Louise ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de physique > Physique des matériaux et nanostructures ; UMR 7054, Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux de Strasbourg, Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, Strasbourg, France
Kravchuk, Volodymyr; Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany ; Leibniz-Institut für Festkörper-und Werkstoffforschung, IFW Dresden, Dresden, Germany ; Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
Hervé, Marie; UMR7588, Institut des NanoSciences de Paris, Sorbonne University and CNRS, Paris, France
Gerber, Simon; Physikalisches Institut, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Garst, Markus; Institut für Theoretische Festkörperphysik, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany ; Institute for Quantum Materials and Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Dupé, Bertrand ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département de physique > Physique des matériaux et nanostructures ; Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS), Bruxelles, Belgium
Wulfhekel, Wulf; Physikalisches Institut, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany ; Institute for Quantum Materials and Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Language :
English
Title :
Observation of the sliding phason mode of the incommensurate magnetic texture in Fe/Ir(111)
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