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Center for Nonlinear Studies |
The study of skyrmions in chiral magnetic materials is an exciting area of research that spans the range from fundamental science to potential device applications. I will begin with an introduction to these topological spin textures, their unusual properties and new experimental advances. I will show how skyrmion crystal phases can be stabilized over a much larger regime of parameter space in systems that break surface inversion or mirror symmetry, in contrast to the broken bulk inversion materials that have been studied previously. We find that the spin texture and topological charge density of skyrmions develops nontrivial spatial structure, different from conventional skyrmions, with a quantized topological charge given by a Chern number. Our theoretical results predict how tuning the Rashba spin orbit coupling and magnetic anisotropy stabilizes skyrmion phases in thin films, surfaces, interfaces and bulk magnetic materials that break mirror symmetry.
Host: Shizeng Lin