Revealing emergent magnetic charge in an antiferromagnet with diamond quantum magnetometry.

Whirling topological textures play a key role in exotic phases of magnetic materials and are promising for logic and memory applications. In antiferromagnets, these textures exhibit enhanced stability and faster dynamics with respect to their ferromagnetic counterparts, but they are also difficult to study due to their vanishing net magnetic moment. One technique that meets the demand of highly sensitive vectorial magnetic field sensing with negligible backaction is diamond quantum magnetometry.

Imaging Nucleation and Propagation of Pinned Domains in Few-Layer FeGeTe.

Engineering nontrivial spin textures in magnetic van der Waals materials is highly desirable for spintronic applications based on hybrid heterostructures. The recent observation of labyrinth and bubble domains in the near room-temperature ferromagnet FeGeTe down to a bilayer thickness was thus a significant advancement toward van der Waals-based many-body physics. However, the physical mechanism responsible for stabilizing these domains remains unclear and requires further investigation.