Tuning the Skyrmion Hall Effect via Engineering of Spin-Orbit Interaction

Ferromagnetic skyrmions are promising information carriers for nonvolatile, energy-efficient, ultradense memory and logic devices of the future. However, their integration in these applications is hampered by the undesirable skyrmion Hall effect (SkHE), a motion transverse to the direction of current flow. This study uses the theory of emergent electrodynamics to derive the effective emergent magnetic fields in skyrmionic systems in the presence of spin-orbit interaction. The authors propose a clever, easy way to tune the SkHE by modulating the system's spin-orbit-interaction strength. This approach opens alternative avenues to overcome the SkHE and enable spintronic applications.