Chiral Symmetry Breaking for Deterministic Switching of Perpendicular Magnetization by Spin–Orbit Torque

Symmetry breaking is a characteristic to determine which branch of a bifurcation system follows upon crossing a critical point. Specifically, in spin–orbit torque (SOT) devices, a fundamental question arises: how can the symmetry of the perpendicular magnetic moment be broken by the in-plane spin polarization? Here, we show that the chiral symmetry breaking by the antisymmetric Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) can induce the deterministic...