Insight into the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction through first-principles study of chiral magnetic structures

This work advances a physical picture of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), capable of addressing the apparently contradicting conclusions of recent studies about the location of the DMI energy in the real and reciprocal space as well as about the relation between the values of atomic moments and DMI strength. It is demonstrated on the example of a Co/Pt bilayer how DMI emerges from the chirality-dependent hybridization of the Co and Pt magnetic-spiral states under the influence of spin-orbit coupling and broken spatial inversion.