Chirality symmetry breaking is a common phenomenon in the Nature. The most intriguing examples come from life sciences (chirality symmetry breaking of biological macromolecules, such as DNA) and from particle physics (e.g. neutrino helicity symmetry breaking). In magnetism, chirality is a characteristic of a number of topologically nontrivial structures, such as domain walls and magnetic vortices. Therefore, chirality symmetry breaking is a subject of very recent studies in various magnetic phenomena. In our study we consider a ferromagnetic Möbius ring with anisotropy of easy-normal type. In the case of strong anisotropy a topologically protected Bloch domain wall forms the ground state of the ring. It is shown that magnetic chirality of the wall is determined by the geometric chirality of the Möbius ring, i.e. the chirality symmetry breaking takes place.
Coupling of Chiralities in Spin and Physical Spaces: The Möbius Ring as a Case Study
http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.114.197204 This article is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 197204 (2015), PDF.
