Rashba-induced chirality switching of domain walls and suppression of the Walker breakdown

We investigate the current-induced motion of ferromagnetic domain walls in the presence of a Rashba spin-orbit interaction of the itinerant electrons. We show how a Rashba interaction can stabilize the domain wall motion, such that the Walker breakdown is shifted to larger current densities. The Rashba spin-orbit interaction creates a fieldlike contribution to the spin torque, which breaks the symmetry of the system and modifies the internal structure of the domain wall. Moreover, it can induce an additional switching of the chirality of the domain wall for sufficiently strong Rashba interactions. This allows one to choose the desired chirality by choosing the direction of the applied spin-polarized current. Both the suppression of the Walker breakdown and the chirality switching affect the domain wall velocity significantly. This is even more pronounced for short current pulses, where an additional domain wall drift in either positive or negative direction appears after the pulse ends. By this, we can steer the final position of the domain wall. This mechanism may help to overcome the current limitations of the domain wall motion due to the Walker breakdown which occurs for rather low current densities in systems without a Rashba spin-orbit interaction.