Skyrmions at the edge: Confinement effects in Fe/Ir(111)

Abstract

We have employed spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy and Monte-Carlo simulations to investigate the effect of lateral confinement onto the nanoskyrmion lattice in Fe/Ir(111). We find a strong coupling of one diagonal of the square magnetic unit cell to the close-packed edges of Fe nanostructures. In triangular islands this coupling in combination with the mismatching symmetries of the islands and of the square nanoskyrmion lattice leads to frustration and triple-domain states. In direct vicinity to ferromagnetic NiFe islands, the surrounding skyrmion lattice forms additional domains. In this case a side of the square magnetic unit cell prefers a parallel orientation to the ferromagnetic edge. These experimental findings can be reproduced and explained by Monte-Carlo simulations. Here, the single-domain state of a triangular island is lower in energy, but nevertheless multi-domain states occur due to the combined effect of entropy and an intrinsic domain wall pinning arising from the skyrmionic character of the spin texture.

5 pages, 4 figures, supplement not uploaded to arXiv due to size limitation

References in corpus (2)

• Additive interfacial chiral interaction in multilayers for stabilization of small individual skyrmion at room temperature
• Magnetic skyrmion logic gates: conversion, duplication and merging of skyrmions

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Controlled Creation of Quantum Skyrmions
• Quantum fluctuations in the order parameter of quantum skyrmion crystals
• Domain Walls in a Row-Wise Antiferromagnetic Mn Monolayer
• The influence of adatom diffusion on the formation of skyrmion lattice in sub-monolayer Fe on Ir(111)
• Creation of nano-skyrmion lattice in Fe/Ir(111) system using voltage pulse