Solid--liquid transition of skyrmions in a two-dimensional chiral magnet

Abstract

We study the melting of skyrmions in a two-dimensional Heisenberg chiral magnet with bi-axial Dzyaloshinskii--Moriya interactions. These topological excitations may form at zero temperature a triangular crystal with long-range positional order. However, we show using large-scale Monte Carlo simulations that at small finite temperature, the skyrmions rather form a typical two-dimensional solid: Positional correlations decay with distance as power laws while the orientational correlations remain finite. At higher temperature, we observe a direct transition from this two-dimensional solid to a liquid with short-range correlations. This differs from generic two-dimensional homogeneous particle systems, where a hexatic phase is realized between the solid and the liquid.

8 pages, 6 figures

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• Rashba-Zener mechanism for nanoscale skyrmions and topological metals
• Signatures of a liquid-crystal transition in spin-wave excitations of skyrmions
• The Liquid--Hexatic Transition for Soft Disks
• Phase diagram of the two-dimensional dipolar Heisenberg model with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the Ising anisotropy
• From chiral spin liquids to skyrmion fluids and crystals, and their interplay with itinerant electrons
• Polyhexatic and Polycrystalline States of Skyrmion Lattices
• Skyrmion-driven topological Hall effect in a Shastry-Sutherland magnet
• Robustness of topological magnons in disordered arrays of skyrmions
• Skyrmion Crystal in a Microwave Field
• Solid-Liquid Transition in a Skyrmion Matter
• Melting and Freezing of a Skyrmion Lattice
• Searching for activated transitions in complex magnetic systems
• Skyrmion Lattice Phases in Thin Film Multilayer
• Higher-order modulations in the skyrmion-lattice phase of Cu${}_2$OSeO${}_3$
• Anisotropic skyrmion liquid phase
• Topological transition and emergent elasticity of dislocation in skyrmion lattice: Beyond Kittel's magnetic-polar analogy
• Diffusionless relaxation of half-skyrmion liquid, hexatic, and crystalline states in a chiral molecular crystal