Highly Asymmetric Chiral Domain-Wall Velocities in Y-Shaped Junctions

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Abstract
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 non-equilibrium 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 which we use to demonstrate sorting of domains.

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