  Magnetic thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) have
localized excitations that correspond to reversed dynamically precessing
magnetic moments, known as magnetic droplet solitons. Fundamentally, these
excitations are associated with an attractive interaction between elementary
spin-excitations (i.e., magnons) and were predicted to occur in PMA materials
in the absence of damping [1,2]. While damping, present in all magnetic
materials, suppresses these excitations, it is now possible to compensate
damping by spin transfer torques through electrical current flow in nanometer
scale contacts to ferromagnetic thin films [3,4]. A theory predicts the
appearance of magnetic droplet solitons at a threshold current in nanocontacts
[5] and, recently, experimental signatures of droplet nucleation have been
reported [6]. However, thus far, they have been observed to be nearly
reversible excitations, with only partially reversed magnetization and to be
subject to instabilities that cause them to drift away from the nanocontacts
(i.e., drift instabilities) [6]. Here we show that magnetic droplet solitons
can be stabilized in a spin transfer nanocontact. Further, they exhibit a
strong hysteretic response to fields and currents and a nearly fully reversed
magnetization in the contact. These observations, in addition to their
fundamental interest, open up new applications for magnetic droplet solitons as
multi-state high frequency current and field tunable oscillators.
