Tabletop imaging of antiferromagnetism with magneto-thermal microscopy
Antiferromagnets are attractive candidates for spintronic devices: they can potentially switch at terahertz speeds, they form stable bits down to the nanoscale, and they are usually unaffected by magnetic fields up to several Tesla. Unlike ferromagnetic switching, antiferromagnetic switching is nonuniform and heavily affected by local magnetoelastic stresses. Imaging antiferromagnetic order is therefore necessary for better understanding of complex switching processes. However, most imaging studies of antiferromagnetism rely on x-ray sources from a synchrotron facility, which limits the range of practical experiments. The focus of this dissertation is to develop magneto-thermal microscopy as a new tabletop technique for imaging antiferromagnets. We focus on materials in which the N'eel order parameter can be controlled by an external parameter, such as electrical current, temperature, or magnetic field. We first image heterostructures of the insulator NiO with Pt using the spin Seebeck effect. We resolve current-induced spin-torque switching of the N'eel vector, and we show that switching occurs by a combination of domain rotation and domain wall motion. We then image metallic FeRh, which undergoes a 1st-order phase transition from antiferromaget to ferromagnet near 400 K, using the anomalous Nernst effect. In the antiferromagnetic phase, we image uncompensated moments within magnetic domains, while in the transition region we find exchange bias between coexisting antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic phases. In a third project, we work with FeRh films engineered such that both phases are stable at room temperature. We demonstrate a ``magnetic Etch-a-Sketch" by laser-writing ferromagnetic regions within the antiferromagnetic background. We show that ferromagnetic regions can be written with submicron resolution at ultrafast speeds and that they are fully erased by cooling the FeRh sample below room temperature. Our results demonstrate a new platform for imaging antiferromagnetism -- available in tabletop format using readily available laboratory equipment -- which could enable rapid and systematic optimization of antiferromagnetic spintronic devices.