Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 9: Novel Functionality and Topology-Driven Phenomena in Ferroics and Correlated Electron Systems (DF with MA, KR, MI, TT and DS)

MA 9.4: Invited Talk

Monday, March 20, 2017, 17:00–17:30, HSZ 02

Topological skyrmion textures in chiral magnets — •Markus Garst — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Technische Universität Dresden, Zellescher Weg 17, 01062 Dresden, Germany

A magnetization that spatially varies within a plane can be characterized by a topological skyrmion number specifying how often the magnetization vector covers the unit sphere. Magnetic skyrmion textures with such a non-trivial winding number are endowed with additional functionality as they efficiently couple to magnon- and itinerant spin currents allowing for novel spintronic applications. Such textures arise, in particular, in chiral magnets where the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction favours a spatially modulated magnetization. This stabilizes magnetic solitons that carry an integer skyrmion charge as well as regular arrangements thereof, i.e., skyrmion crystals. We demonstrate that defects of helimagnetic order can carry half-integer skyrmion numbers. In analogy to cholesteric liquid crystals, such defects can be interpreted as disclinations and dislocations that are instrumental for the magnetic relaxation process in these systems. We also show that an array of such defects might arise in topological domain walls of helimagnetic order permitting an efficient manipulation by spin currents.