Paper detail

Simulations of the dynamic switching of vortex chirality in magnetic nanodisks by a uniform field pulse

We present a possibility to switch the chirality of a spin vortex occurring in a magnetic nanodisk by applying a uniform in-plane field pulse, based on optimizing its strength and duration. The related spin-dynamical process, investigated by micromagnetic simulations, consists of several stages. After applying the field, the original vortex is expelled from the disk, after which two C-shaped states oscillate between each other. The essence of the method is based on turning the field off at a suitably chosen moment for which the orientation of the C-state will evolve into the nucleation of a vortex with the desirable chirality. This idea simply uses the information about the original chirality present inside the nanodisk during the dynamic process before losing it in saturation, and can thus be regarded as analogous to the recent studies on the polarity switching.