Fig. 2. The presence of sharp 180° domain walls inferred from XMLD-PEEM.

(A) XMLD-PEEM micrograph of the surface of the CuMnAs film. The compass indicates the direction of the x-ray beam, and the white double arrow indicates its polarization. Red double arrows indicate the spin axis of selected antiferromagnetic domains corresponding to the measured black/white contrast. (B and C) Zoom-ins on two regions selected from (A). (D) XMLD-PEEM micrograph corresponding to the area in (A) with the beam direction and polarization rotated by 45°. Red double arrows correspond to the mean angle of the spin axis in the micromagnetic domain walls. (E and F) Zoom-ins on the same regions as in (B) where the blue and yellow arrows indicate Mn_A and Mn_B sublattice moments, respectively, i.e., the orientation of the Néel vector. The Néel vector returns to its original orientation when closing a loop in (F). In contrast, the Néel vector appears to be reversed when completing the closed loop in (E), indicating that a 180° reversal had to occur an odd number of times along the loop and that the corresponding sharp domain wall is below the XMLD-PEEM detection limit.