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Topological defect-mediated skyrmion annihilation in three dimensions

Birch, Max T.; Cortés-Ortuño, David; Khanh, Nguyen D.; Seki, Shinichiro; Štefančič, Aleš; Balakrishnan, Geetha; Tokura, Yoshinori; Hatton, Peter D.

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Authors

Max T. Birch

David Cortés-Ortuño

Nguyen D. Khanh

Shinichiro Seki

Aleš Štefančič

Geetha Balakrishnan

Yoshinori Tokura



Abstract

The creation and annihilation of magnetic skyrmions are mediated by three-dimensional topological defects known as Bloch points. Investigation of such dynamical processes is important both for understanding the emergence of exotic topological spin textures, and for future engineering of skyrmions in technological applications. However, while the annihilation of skyrmions has been extensively investigated in two dimensions, in three dimensions the phase transitions are considerably more complex. We report field-dependent experimental measurements of metastable skyrmion lifetimes in an archetypal chiral magnet, revealing two distinct regimes. Comparison to supporting three-dimensional geodesic nudged elastic band simulations indicates that these correspond to skyrmion annihilation into either the helical and conical states, each exhibiting a different transition mechanism. The results highlight that the lowest energy magnetic configuration of the system plays a crucial role when considering the emergence and stability of topological spin structures via defect-mediated dynamics.

Citation

Birch, M. T., Cortés-Ortuño, D., Khanh, N. D., Seki, S., Štefančič, A., Balakrishnan, G., Tokura, Y., & Hatton, P. D. (2021). Topological defect-mediated skyrmion annihilation in three dimensions. Communications Physics, 4(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00675-4

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jul 13, 2021
Online Publication Date Aug 5, 2021
Publication Date 2021
Deposit Date Nov 16, 2021
Publicly Available Date Nov 16, 2021
Journal Communications Physics
Electronic ISSN 2399-3650
Publisher Nature Research
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 4
Issue 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00675-4
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1222863

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.






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