Theory of skyrmion states in liquid crystals: axisymmetric cholesteric bubbles (spherulites)

Abstract

Within the Oseen-Frank theory we derive numerically exact solutions for axisymmetric localized states in chiral liquid crystal layers with homeotropic anchoring. These solutions describe recently observed two-dimensional skyrmions in confinement-frustrated chiral nematics [P. J. Acherman et al. Phys. Rev. E 90, 012505 (2014)]. We stress that these solitonic states arise due to a fundamental stabilization mechanism responsible for the formation of skyrmions in cubic helimagnets and other noncentrosymmetric condensed-matter systems.

6 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Spontaneous Skyrmion Ground States in Magnetic Metals
• Two-dimensional skyrmions and other solitonic structures in confinement-frustrated chiral nematics
• Surface twist instabilities and skyrmion states in chiral ferromagnets
• Extended elliptic skyrmion gratings in epitaxial MnSi thin films

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