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Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions

Magnetic skyrmions are topological magnetic spin structures exhibiting particle-like behaviour. They are of strong interest from a fundamental viewpoint and for application, where they have potential to act as information carriers in future low-power computing technologies. Importantly, skyrmions ha...

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Autores principales: Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic, Lamb, Raymond J., van der Jagt, Johannes W., Paterson, Gary W., Swagten, Henk J. M., McGrouther, Damien
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7363836/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32669654
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17338-7
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author Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic
Lamb, Raymond J.
van der Jagt, Johannes W.
Paterson, Gary W.
Swagten, Henk J. M.
McGrouther, Damien
author_facet Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic
Lamb, Raymond J.
van der Jagt, Johannes W.
Paterson, Gary W.
Swagten, Henk J. M.
McGrouther, Damien
author_sort Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic
collection PubMed
description Magnetic skyrmions are topological magnetic spin structures exhibiting particle-like behaviour. They are of strong interest from a fundamental viewpoint and for application, where they have potential to act as information carriers in future low-power computing technologies. Importantly, skyrmions have high physical stability because of topological protection. However, they have potential to deform according to their local energy environment. Here we demonstrate that, in regions of high exchange energy density, skyrmions may exhibit such extreme deformation that spontaneous merging with nearest neighbours or spawning new skyrmions is favoured to attain a lower energy state. Using transmission electron microscopy and a high-speed imaging detector, we observe dynamics involving distinct configurational states, in which transitions are accompanied by spontaneous creation or annihilation of skyrmions. These observations raise important questions regarding the limits of skyrmion stability and topological charge conservation, while also suggesting a means of control of skyrmion creation and annihilation.
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spelling pubmed-73638362020-07-20 Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic Lamb, Raymond J. van der Jagt, Johannes W. Paterson, Gary W. Swagten, Henk J. M. McGrouther, Damien Nat Commun Article Magnetic skyrmions are topological magnetic spin structures exhibiting particle-like behaviour. They are of strong interest from a fundamental viewpoint and for application, where they have potential to act as information carriers in future low-power computing technologies. Importantly, skyrmions have high physical stability because of topological protection. However, they have potential to deform according to their local energy environment. Here we demonstrate that, in regions of high exchange energy density, skyrmions may exhibit such extreme deformation that spontaneous merging with nearest neighbours or spawning new skyrmions is favoured to attain a lower energy state. Using transmission electron microscopy and a high-speed imaging detector, we observe dynamics involving distinct configurational states, in which transitions are accompanied by spontaneous creation or annihilation of skyrmions. These observations raise important questions regarding the limits of skyrmion stability and topological charge conservation, while also suggesting a means of control of skyrmion creation and annihilation. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-07-15 /pmc/articles/PMC7363836/ /pubmed/32669654 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17338-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access 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/.
spellingShingle Article
Rendell-Bhatti, Frederic
Lamb, Raymond J.
van der Jagt, Johannes W.
Paterson, Gary W.
Swagten, Henk J. M.
McGrouther, Damien
Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title_full Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title_fullStr Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title_full_unstemmed Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title_short Spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
title_sort spontaneous creation and annihilation dynamics and strain-limited stability of magnetic skyrmions
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7363836/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32669654
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17338-7
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