How to reveal metastable skyrmionic spin structures by spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy

Abstract

We predict the occurrence of metastable skyrmionic spin structures such as antiskyrmions and higher-order skyrmions in ultra-thin transition-metal films at surfaces using Monte Carlo simulations based on a spin Hamiltonian parametrized from density functional theory calculations. We show that such spin structures will appear with a similar contrast in spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy (SP-STM) images. Both skyrmions and antiskyrmions display a circular shape for out-of-plane magnetized tips and a two-lobe butterfly contrast for in-plane tips. An unambiguous distinction can be achieved by rotating the tip magnetization direction without requiring the information of all components of the magnetization.

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• Blowing Magnetic Skyrmion Bubbles
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Cited by in corpus (20)

• Antiskyrmions stabilized at interfaces by anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
• Spontaneous skyrmionic lattice from anisotropic symmetric exchange in a Ni-halide monolayer
• Chiral Magnetic Skyrmions with Arbitrary Topological Charge ("skyrmionic sacks")
• Anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in ultra-thin epitaxial Au/Co/W(110)
• Trochoidal motion and pair generation in skyrmion and antiskyrmion dynamics under spin-orbit torques
• Skyrmion production on demand by homogeneous DC currents
• Formation and stability of metastable skyrmionic spin structures with various topologies in an ultrathin film
• B-T phase diagram of Pd/Fe/Ir(111) computed with parallel tempering Monte Carlo
• Thermally Driven Topology in Chiral Magnets
• Skyrmion instabilities and distorted spiral states in a frustrated chiral magnet
• Stability of Long-lived Antiskyrmions in Mn-Pt-Sn Material
• Spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy characteristics of skyrmionic spin structures exhibiting various topologies
• A model for individual quantal nano-skyrmions
• Antiskyrmionic ferroelectric medium
• High-resolution combined tunneling electron charge and spin transport theory of Néel and Bloch skyrmions
• Stability and magnetic properties of Fe double-layers on Ir (111)
• Metaheuristic conditional neural network for harvesting skyrmionic metastable states
• Theory of high-resolution tunneling spin transport on a magnetic skyrmion
• Tuning of magnetic structures topology via single-ion anisotropy and magnetic field in frustrated 2D semiconductors
• Design of 2D Skyrmionic Metamaterial Through Controlled Assembly