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Understanding the electrical manipulation of the antiferromagnetic order is a crucial aspect to enable the design of antiferromagnetic devices working at THz frequencies. Focusing on collinear insulating antiferromagnetic NiO Pt thin films as a materials platform, we identify the crystallographic orientation of the domains that can be switched by currents and quantify the N el vector direction changes. We demonstrate electrical switching between different T domains by current pulses, finding that the N el vector orientation in these domains is along [ 5 5 19], different compared to the bulk amp; 10216;112 amp; 10217; directions. The final state of the in plane component of the N el vector nIP after switching by current pulses j along the [1 10] directions is nIP amp; 8741;j. By comparing the observed N el vector orientation and the strain in the thin films, assuming that this variation arises solely from magnetoelastic effects, we quantify the order of magnitude of the magnetoelastic coupling coefficient as b0 2b1 3 107J m3. This information is key for the understanding of current induced switching in antiferromagnets and for the design and use of such devices as active elements in spintronic devices

Asymmetrically sandwiched thin magnetic layers with perpendicular anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) is the prospective material science platform for spin-orbitronic technologies that rely on the motion of chiral magnetic textures, like skyrmions or chiral domain walls (DWs). The dynamic performance of a DW-based racetracks is defined by the strength of DMI and the DW damping. The determination of the latter parameter is typically done based on technically challenging DW motion experiments. Here, we propose a method to access both parameters, DMI constant and DW damping, yet in static experiments by monitoring the tilt of magnetic DWs in nanostripes. We experimentally demonstrate that in perpendicularly magnetized //CrO x /Co/Pt stacks, DWs can be trapped on edge roughness in a metastable tilted state as a result of the DW dynamics driven by external magnetic field. The measured tilt can be correlated to the DMI strength and DW damping in a self-consistent way in the frame of a theoretical formalism based on the collective coordinate approach.

The optical control of magnetism offers an attractive possibility to manipulate small magnetic domains for prospective memory devices on ultrashort time scales. Here, we report on the local deterministic transformation of the magnetic domain pattern from stripes to bubbles in out-of-plane magnetized Co/Pt multilayers controlled only by the helicity of ultrashort laser pulses. Relying on the experimentally determined average size of stripe domains and the magnetic layer thickness, we calculate the temperature and characteristic fields at which the stripe-bubble transformation occurs. Furthermore, we demonstrate that in the narrow range of the laser power, the helicity induces a drag on domain walls.