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Hauptverfasser: Parker, William S., Reddinger, Jacques A., McMorran, Benjamin J.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19085
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author Parker, William S.
Reddinger, Jacques A.
McMorran, Benjamin J.
author_facet Parker, William S.
Reddinger, Jacques A.
McMorran, Benjamin J.
contents Magnetic skyrmions are chiral spin textures which have attracted intense research for their fundamentally novel physics and potential applications as spintronic information carriers. The stability which makes them so potentially useful is a result of their underlying non-trivial topology. While skyrmions were originally predicted and observed in crystalline materials lacking inversion symmetry, some of the most promising host systems for skyrmions are multilayer thin films, where skyrmions have been stabilized at ambient conditions, which is critical for their use in real world devices. The skyrmions found in multilayer thin films have additional three-dimensional structure, with their domain wall helicities twisting through the thickness of the film to create a hybrid skyrmion composed of a Bloch-type core with Néel-type caps of opposite chiralities at the surfaces. In this work, we show that this three-dimensional variation creates additional knotted topological structure, providing an explanation for their exceptional stability in ambient conditions. We show that hybrid skyrmions can be described as half-integer Hopfions, and that their field lines have the knotted structure of the Hopf fibration. Furthermore, we show that the topological charge of partially twisted hybrid skyrmions can be related to the domain wall helicity at the surfaces, providing a straightforward way to connect experimental measurements to underlying topology.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_19085
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Hybrid Skyrmions in Magnetic Multilayer Thin Films are Half-Integer Hopfions
Parker, William S.
Reddinger, Jacques A.
McMorran, Benjamin J.
Materials Science
Magnetic skyrmions are chiral spin textures which have attracted intense research for their fundamentally novel physics and potential applications as spintronic information carriers. The stability which makes them so potentially useful is a result of their underlying non-trivial topology. While skyrmions were originally predicted and observed in crystalline materials lacking inversion symmetry, some of the most promising host systems for skyrmions are multilayer thin films, where skyrmions have been stabilized at ambient conditions, which is critical for their use in real world devices. The skyrmions found in multilayer thin films have additional three-dimensional structure, with their domain wall helicities twisting through the thickness of the film to create a hybrid skyrmion composed of a Bloch-type core with Néel-type caps of opposite chiralities at the surfaces. In this work, we show that this three-dimensional variation creates additional knotted topological structure, providing an explanation for their exceptional stability in ambient conditions. We show that hybrid skyrmions can be described as half-integer Hopfions, and that their field lines have the knotted structure of the Hopf fibration. Furthermore, we show that the topological charge of partially twisted hybrid skyrmions can be related to the domain wall helicity at the surfaces, providing a straightforward way to connect experimental measurements to underlying topology.
title Hybrid Skyrmions in Magnetic Multilayer Thin Films are Half-Integer Hopfions
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.19085