Communications Physics (Aug 2021)

Topological defect-mediated skyrmion annihilation in three dimensions

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

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-021-00675-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

Read online

Skyrmions are topologically non-trivial, vortex-like magnetic structures the dynamics of which have been mostly studied in 2D systems, but they are also able to exist as 3D tube-like structures. Here, the authors report a combination of experimental and computational results investigating the annihilation dynamics of 3D skyrmion structures in order to better understand how to stabilise topological structures in other bulk magnetic systems.