Fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmion lattice induced by anisotropic couplings

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topological solitons with a nanoscale winding spin texture that hold promise for spintronics applications. Until now, skyrmions have been observed in a variety of magnets that exhibit nearly parallel alignment for the neighbouring spins, but theoretically, skyrmions with anti-parallel neighbouring spins are also possible. The latter, antiferromagnetic skyrmions, may allow more flexible control compared to the conventional ferromagnetic skyrmions. Here, by combining neutron scattering and Monte Carlo simulations, we show that a fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmion lattice with an incipient meron character is stabilized in MnSc${}_2$S${}_4$ through anisotropic couplings. Our work demonstrates that the theoretically proposed antiferromagnetic skyrmions can be stabilized in real materials and represents an important step towards implementing the antiferromagnetic-skyrmion based spintronic devices.

14 pages, 11 figures, submitted version with necessary edits

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Meron, skyrmion, and vortex crystals in centrosymmetric tetragonal magnets
• Noncoplanar multiple-$Q$ spin textures by itinerant frustration: Effects of single-ion anisotropy and bond-dependent anisotropy
• Zoology of multiple-Q spin textures in a centrosymmetric tetragonal magnet with itinerant electrons
• Skyrmion crystal and spiral phases in centrosymmetric bilayer magnets with staggered Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction
• Spin-orbit enabled all-electrical readout of chiral spin-textures
• Recent progress in antiferromagnetic dynamics
• Nonreciprocal dynamics of ferrimagnetic bimerons
• Magnetic order and exchange couplings in the frustrated diamond lattice antiferromagnet MnSc${}_2$Se${}_4$