Direct Demonstration of Topological Stability of Magnetic Skyrmions via Topology Manipulation
[1];
[3];
[5];
[8];
[10]
- Chonnam National Univ., Gwangju (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Physics; Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Center for X-ray Optics; Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Emerging Materials Science; Korea Univ., Seoul (Korea, Republic of). Center for Spin-Orbitronic Materials
- Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan (Korea, Republic of). School of Materials Science and Engineering
- Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, MO (United States). Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
- Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific, San Diego, CA (United States)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Center for X-ray Optics
- Korea Univ., Seoul, (Korea, Rep. of). KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology
- Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Center for Memory and Recording Research; Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States). Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Korea Univ., Seoul, (Korea, Rep. of). KU-KIST Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology; Korea Univ., Seoul, (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
- Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States). Center for X-ray Optics; Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Emerging Materials Science; Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Ulsan (Korea, Republic of). School of Materials Science and Engineering
- Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST) (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Emerging Materials Science
Topological protection precludes a continuous deformation between topologically inequivalent configurations in a continuum. Motivated by this concept, magnetic skyrmions, topologically nontrivial spin textures, are expected to exhibit topological stability, thereby offering a prospect as a nanometer-scale nonvolatile information carrier. In real materials, however, atomic spins are configured as not continuous but discrete distributions, which raises a fundamental question if the topological stability is indeed preserved for real magnetic skyrmions. Answering this question necessitates a direct comparison between topologically nontrivial and trivial spin textures, but the direct comparison in one sample under the same magnetic fields has been challenging. Here we report how to selectively achieve either a skyrmion state or a topologically trivial bubble state in a single specimen and thereby experimentally show how robust the skyrmion structure is in comparison with the bubbles. We demonstrate that topologically nontrivial magnetic skyrmions show longer lifetimes than trivial bubble structures, evidencing the topological stability in a real discrete system. Our work corroborates the physical importance of the topology in the magnetic materials, which has hitherto been suggested by mathematical arguments, providing an important step toward ever-dense and more-stable magnetic devices.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC); Future Materials Discovery Program
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-05CH11231; NRF-2015M3D1A1070465; NRF-2017R1A2B4003139; NRF-2019R1A2C2002996.
- OSTI ID:
- 1782142
- Journal Information:
- ACS Nano, Vol. 14, Issue 3; ISSN 1936-0851
- Publisher:
- American Chemical Society (ACS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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