Microscopic origin of chirality in nominally centrosymmetric ferromagnets

Determine the microscopic origin of magnetic chirality in nominally centrosymmetric ferromagnets within superconductor–ferromagnet hybrid systems, in order to explain how chiral spin textures arise despite bulk inversion symmetry.

Background

Chiral magnetic textures in superconductor–ferromagnet hybrids control signatures of long-range triplet superconductivity and other proximity effects. However, many ferromagnets used in such hybrids are nominally centrosymmetric in bulk, where conventional Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions would be symmetry-forbidden, making the microscopic origin of chirality nontrivial.

This work investigates FePd-based heterostructures and proposes that chemical disorder and compositional gradients can induce effective Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interactions leading to net chirality. The stated unresolved question provides the broader motivation for establishing microscopic mechanisms behind chirality in these materials.

References

The origin of this chiral symmetry breaking is intrinsically not clear, as in multilayers without DMI both rotation senses should nucleate equally.

— Laser-induced metastable (anti-)skyrmion states with higher-order topological charge  (2609.13112 - Titze et al., 11 Sep 2026) in Section “Analysis of the energy barrier for nucleation of different spin objects”

Chirality in superconductor-ferromagnet hybrids strongly influences phenomena such as the observable signatures of long-range triplet superconductivity, but its microscopic origin in nominally centrosymmetric ferromagnets is still unclear.

— Disorder-induced chirality in superconductor-ferromagnet heterostructures revealed by neutron scattering and multiscale modeling  (2604.02824 - Stellhorn et al., 3 Apr 2026) in Abstract