Giant enhancement of the skyrmion stability in a chemically strained helimagnet

Abstract

We employed small-angle neutron scattering to demonstrate that the magnetic skyrmion lattice can be realized in bulk chiral magnets as a thermodynamically stable state at temperatures much lower than the ordering temperature of the material. This is in the regime where temperature fluctuations become completely irrelevant to the formation of the topologically non-trivial magnetic texture. In this attempt we focused on the model helimagnet MnSi, in which the skyrmion lattice was previously well characterized and shown to exist only in a very narrow phase pocket close to the Curie temperature of 29.5~K. We revealed that large uniaxial distortions caused by the crystal-lattice strain in MnSi result in stabilization of the skyrmion lattice in magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the uniaxial strain at temperatures as low as 5~K. To study the bulk chiral magnet subjected to a large uniaxial stress, we have utilized $\mu$m-sized single-crystalline inclusions of MnSi naturally found inside single crystals of the nonmagnetic material Mn${}_{11}$Si${}_{19}$. The reciprocal-space imaging allowed us to unambiguously identify the stabilization of the skyrmion state over the competing conical spin spiral.

6 pages, 4 figures, accepted in PRB

References in corpus (6)

• A new class of chiral materials hosting magnetic skyrmions beyond room temperature
• Long wavelength helimagnetic order and skyrmion lattice phase in Cu2OSeO3
• Extended elliptic skyrmion gratings in epitaxial MnSi thin films
• Neutron study of in-plane skyrmions in MnSi thin films
• Strain in epitaxial MnSi films on Si(111) in the thick film limit studied by polarization-dependent extended x-ray absorption fine structure
• Glass-Like Thermal Conductivity in Nanostructures of a Complex Anisotropic Crystal

Cited by in corpus (7)

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• Spin waves in skyrmionic structures with various topological charges
• Topological Defect Mediated Helical Phase Reorientation by Uniaxial Stress
• Tailoring energy barriers of Bloch-point-mediated transitions between topological spin textures
• Enhanced skyrmion metastability under applied strain in FeGe
• On Curie temperature of B20-MnSi films
• Single-$q$ Cycloid and Double-$q$ Vortex Lattices in Layered Magnetic Semimetal EuAg${}_4$Sb${}_2$