Science and Applications of Spin Textures and Spin Currents

The field of spintronics is dynamic and evolving at a tremendous pace. This field is centered on the creation and manipulation of spin currents and their use in manipulating magnetic moments via the transfer of spin and orbital angular momenta. Just in the past 3 years the conversion of pure charge currents to pure spin currents has made major advances with unforeseen efficiencies in simple metals of up to 50% and perhaps even greater efficiencies in unconventional topological matter. Indeed, Weyl semi-metals were experimentally realized in the same time period with the observation of titanic magnetoresistance, chiral anomalies, Fermi arcs and more. Weyl and Dirac semi-metals and topological insulators form a broad class of topological matter that appears to encompass ever more materials. These materials hold much promise including: dissipationless spin transport; the locking of the electron's momentum and its spin; and valleytronics. Tiny spin currents can be used to switch magnetic nano-elements or move magnetic domain walls at great speeds. Major advances in the current induced motion of chiral domain walls and non-collinear spin textures, including skyrmions and antiferromagnetic skyrmions, have been made recently. Similarly, the manipulation of magnetization using both linear and circularly polarized photons is a subject of much current debate with the recent demonstration of the all-optical switching of simple ferromagnets. These and other subjects relating especially to non collinear spin textures and spin currents will be the focus of this GRC. We invite both new and experienced researchers to join us in discussing these exciting developments and in presenting their latest research on these topics.