Magnetic Skyrmions and the role of a Chiral Spin Liquid to enhance their stability in the presence of thermal Fluctuations

H. D. ROSALES; F. A. GÓMEZ ALBARRACÍN; P. PUJOL; L. JAUBERT

Conferencia; The IEEE Around-the-Clock Around-the-Globe Magnetics Conference; 2023

(Invitado y charla semiplenaria en la Conferencia Internacional 2023 Around-the-Clock Around-the-Globe Magnetics Conference (AtC-AtG)). Abstract: For several years now, magnetic textures known as skyrmions have garnered significant interest, both from a fundamental and technological perspective. This interest stems from their unique properties and their potential as information carriers. Two of the most significant challenges associated with skyrmions are their stability during motion when interacting with electric currents and the possibility to manipulate and control them, especially at high temperatures where strong thermal fluctuations can ultimately lead to their disintegration. Related to the first challenge, the utilization of antiferromagnetic skyrmions [1] can mitigate the transverse deflection in their movement due to their inherent antiferromagnetic nature. Regarding the second challenge, one potential approach is to generate energy barriers that enhance the stability of skyrmions.In this talk, first, I will discuss general aspects and properties of skyrmions, and give a few examples of materials and models hosting antiferromagnetic skyrmions. Then, related to the second challenge, I will present an alternative way to stabilize skyrmions in the presence of strong thermal fluctuations. In this approach, we propose a microscopic model that combines two interesting aspects of condensed matter: spin liquids [2] and skyrmion physics, to control the density of skyrmions as a function of the temperature [3]. We find that the chiral spin liquid acts as a buffer that allows the stabilization of exotic skyrmion phases, which can thus be manipulated simply by temperature and an external magnetic field.References: [1] Gao, S., Rosales, H.D., Gómez Albarracín, F.A. et al. “Fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmion lattice induced by anisotropic couplings”, Nature 586, 37-41 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2716-8 [2] Naïmo Davier, Flavia Gómez Albarracín, Diego Rosales, et al, “A combined approach to analyze and classify families of classical spin liquids”, under review, arXiv:2304.10906 [cond-mat.str-el]., https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.10906 [3] H. Diego Rosales, Flavia A. Gómez Albarracín, Pierre Pujol, et al. , “Skyrmion Fluid and Bimeron Glass Protected by a Chiral Spin Liquid on a Kagome Lattice”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 106703 (2023), https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.106703