Abstract

The skyrmion lattice state (SkL), a crystal built of mesoscopic spin vortices, gains its stability via thermal fluctuations in all bulk skyrmion host materials known to date. Therefore, its existence is limited to a narrow temperature region below the paramagnetic state. This stability range can drastically increase in systems with restricted geometries, such as thin films, interfaces and nanowires. Thermal quenching can also promote the SkL as a metastable state over extended temperature ranges. Here, we demonstrate more generally that a proper choice of material parameters alone guarantees the thermodynamic stability of the SkL over the full temperature range below the paramagnetic state down to zero kelvin. We found that GaV4Se8, a polar magnet with easy-plane anisotropy, hosts a robust Néel-type SkL even in its ground state. Our supporting theory confirms that polar magnets with weak uniaxial anisotropy are ideal candidates to realize SkLs with wide stability ranges.

Details

Title
Equilibrium Skyrmion Lattice Ground State in a Polar Easy-plane Magnet
Author
Bordács, S 1 ; Butykai, A 1 ; Szigeti, B G 1 ; White, J S 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Cubitt, R 3 ; Leonov, A O 4 ; Widmann, S 5 ; Ehlers, D 5 ; H-A Krug von Nidda 5 ; Tsurkan, V 6 ; Loidl, A 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kézsmárki, I 7 

1  Department of Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics and MTA-BME Lendület Magneto-optical Spectroscopy Research Group, Budapest, Hungary 
2  Laboratory for Neutron Scattering and Imaging, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland 
3  Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, France 
4  Center for Chiral Science, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan; Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hiroshima University Kagamiyama, Hiroshima, Japan 
5  Experimental Physics V, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany 
6  Experimental Physics V, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany; Institute of Applied Physics, Academy of Sciences of Moldova, Chisinau, Republic of Moldova 
7  Department of Physics, Budapest University of Technology and Economics and MTA-BME Lendület Magneto-optical Spectroscopy Research Group, Budapest, Hungary; Experimental Physics V, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany 
Pages
1-11
Publication year
2017
Publication date
Aug 2017
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07996-x
ProQuest document ID
1957194983
Copyright
© 2017. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.