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Title: Two-dimensional skyrmion bags in liquid crystals and ferromagnets

Abstract

Reconfigurable, ordered matter offers great potential for future low-power computer memory by storing information in energetically stable configurations. Among these, skyrmions—which are topologically protected, robust excitations that have been demonstrated in chiral magnets and in liquid crystals—are driving much excitement about potential spintronic applications. These information-encoding structures topologically resemble field configurations in many other branches of physics and have a rich history, although chiral condensed-matter systems so far have yielded realizations only of elementary full and fractional skyrmions. Here we describe stable, high-degree multi-skyrmion configurations where an arbitrary number of antiskyrmions are contained within a larger skyrmion. We call these structures skyrmion bags. We demonstrate them experimentally and numerically in liquid crystals and numerically in micromagnetic simulations either without or with magnetostatic effects. Finally, we find that skyrmion bags act like single skyrmions in pairwise interaction and under the influence of current in magnetic materials, and are thus an exciting proposition for topological magnetic storage and logic devices.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]
+ Show Author Affiliations
  1. Univ. of Bristol (United Kingdom)
  2. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
  3. Univ. of Bristol (United Kingdom); Univ. of Birmingham (United Kindom)
  4. Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States); National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Univ. of Colorado, Boulder, CO (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
OSTI Identifier:
1594982
Grant/Contract Number:  
SC0010305; RP2013-K-009
Resource Type:
Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Nature Physics
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 15; Journal Issue: 7; Journal ID: ISSN 1745-2473
Publisher:
Nature Publishing Group (NPG)
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS; liquid crystals; spintronics; structure of solids and liquids

Citation Formats

Foster, David, Kind, Charles, Ackerman, Paul J., Tai, Jung-Shen B., Dennis, Mark R., and Smalyukh, Ivan I. Two-dimensional skyrmion bags in liquid crystals and ferromagnets. United States: N. p., 2019. Web. doi:10.1038/s41567-019-0476-x.
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Foster, David, Kind, Charles, Ackerman, Paul J., Tai, Jung-Shen B., Dennis, Mark R., & Smalyukh, Ivan I. Two-dimensional skyrmion bags in liquid crystals and ferromagnets. United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0476-x
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Foster, David, Kind, Charles, Ackerman, Paul J., Tai, Jung-Shen B., Dennis, Mark R., and Smalyukh, Ivan I. Mon . "Two-dimensional skyrmion bags in liquid crystals and ferromagnets". United States. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0476-x. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1594982.
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@article{osti_1594982,
title = {Two-dimensional skyrmion bags in liquid crystals and ferromagnets},
author = {Foster, David and Kind, Charles and Ackerman, Paul J. and Tai, Jung-Shen B. and Dennis, Mark R. and Smalyukh, Ivan I.},
abstractNote = {Reconfigurable, ordered matter offers great potential for future low-power computer memory by storing information in energetically stable configurations. Among these, skyrmions—which are topologically protected, robust excitations that have been demonstrated in chiral magnets and in liquid crystals—are driving much excitement about potential spintronic applications. These information-encoding structures topologically resemble field configurations in many other branches of physics and have a rich history, although chiral condensed-matter systems so far have yielded realizations only of elementary full and fractional skyrmions. Here we describe stable, high-degree multi-skyrmion configurations where an arbitrary number of antiskyrmions are contained within a larger skyrmion. We call these structures skyrmion bags. We demonstrate them experimentally and numerically in liquid crystals and numerically in micromagnetic simulations either without or with magnetostatic effects. Finally, we find that skyrmion bags act like single skyrmions in pairwise interaction and under the influence of current in magnetic materials, and are thus an exciting proposition for topological magnetic storage and logic devices.},
doi = {10.1038/s41567-019-0476-x},
journal = {Nature Physics},
number = 7,
volume = 15,
place = {United States},
year = {Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2019},
month = {Mon Apr 01 00:00:00 EDT 2019}
}
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https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-019-0476-x
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    Works referencing / citing this record:

    Magnetic Skyrmions at Critical Coupling
    journal, January 2020

    Schools of skyrmions with electrically tunable elastic interactions
    journal, October 2019

    Dynamics of electrically driven solitons in nematic and cholesteric liquid crystals
    journal, January 2020

    Existence and stability of skyrmion bags in thin magnetic films
    journal, January 2020

    • Kind, Charles; Friedemann, Sven; Read, Dan
    • Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 116, Issue 2
    • DOI: 10.1063/1.5127173

    Unraveling the role of dipolar versus Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions in stabilizing compact magnetic skyrmions
    journal, January 2020

    Three-dimensional crystals of adaptive knots
    journal, September 2019

    Optically enriched and guided dynamics of active skyrmions
    journal, January 2020

    • Sohn, Hayley R. O.; Liu, Changda D.; Voinescu, Robert
    • Optics Express, Vol. 28, Issue 5
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    Unraveling the role of dipolar versus Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in stabilizing compact magnetic skyrmions
    text, January 2019

    Topology of three-dimensional active nematic turbulence confined to droplets
    text, January 2019

    Light-controlled skyrmions and torons as reconfigurable particles
    text, January 2019

    Optically enriched and guided dynamics of active skyrmions
    text, January 2019

    Three-dimensional crystals of adaptive knots
    text, January 2019

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