Vortex Structure in Chiral Helimagnet/Superconductor Bilayer Structure

We studied vortex structures in a chiral helimagnet/ superconductor bilayer structure by solving the Ginzburg-Landau equations. We found that vortex structures depend on the magnetic distribution in the chiral helimagnet. In addition, when the chiral helimagnet forms a chiral soliton lattice where the helical rotation of the magnetizations loosens periodically under an external magnetic field, vortices gather in the region where the directions of the magnetization are parallel to the external magnetic field. It is expected that vortices cannot move from one region to the next region, so that the pinning effect appears. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).