Magnetic particle-antiparticle creation and annihilation

Abstract

A fundamental property of particles and antiparticles, such as electrons and positrons, is their ability to annihilate one another. Similar behavior is predicted for magnetic solitons -- localized spin textures that can be distinguished by their topological index $Q$. Theoretically, magnetic topological solitons with opposite values of $Q$, such as skyrmions and their antiparticles -- antiskyrmions -- are expected to be able to merge continuously and to annihilate. However, experimental verification of such particle-antiparticle pair production and annihilation processes has been lacking. Here, we report the creation and annihilation of skyrmion-antiskyrmion pairs in an exceptionally thin film of the cubic chiral magnet B20-type FeGe observed using transmission electron microscopy. Our observations are highly reproducible and are fully consistent with micromagnetic simulations. Our findings provide a new platform for fundamental studies of particles and antiparticles based on magnetic solids and open new perspectives for practical applications of thin films of isotropic chiral magnets.

16 pages, 14 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Magnetic Skyrmion Bundles and Their Current-Driven Dynamics
• Unveiling the three-dimensional spin texture of skyrmion tubes
• Room-temperature antiskyrmions and sawtooth surface textures in a noncentrosymmetric magnet with $S_4$ symmetry
• Magnetic skyrmions, chiral kinks and holomorphic functions
• Magnetic skyrmion braids
• Turning chiral skyrmion inside out
• Geometry and Symmetry in Skyrmion Dynamics
• Nano-to-micro spatiotemporal imaging of magnetic skyrmion's life cycle
• Transverse Transport in Two-Dimensional Relativistic Systems with Non-Trivial Spin Textures
• Electronic scattering off a magnetic hopfion

Cited by in corpus (18)

• Room-temperature sub-100 nm Néel-type skyrmions in non-stoichiometric van der Waals ferromagnet $\mathrm{F}{\mathrm{e}}_{3-\mathrm{x}}\mathrm{GaT}{\mathrm{e}}_2$ with ultrafast laser writability
• Stable skyrmion bundles at room temperature and zero magnetic field in a chiral magnet
• Sewing skyrmion and antiskyrmion by quadrupole of Bloch points
• Skyrmion-Bubble Bundles in an X-type Sr2Co2Fe28O46 Hexaferrite above Room Temperature
• Embedded skyrmion bags in thin films of chiral magnets
• Deterministic generation of skyrmions and antiskyrmions by electric current
• Room Temperature Magnetic Skyrmions in Gradient-Composition Engineered CoPt Single Layers
• Tailed skyrmions -- an obscure branch of magnetic solitons
• Reconstruction of classical skyrmions from Anderson towers: quantum Darwinism in action
• Heliknoton in a film of cubic chiral magnet
• Effect of Magnetic Anisotropy and Gradient-Induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction on the Formation of Magnetic Skyrmions
• Global Rotation of Skyrmion Bags under Vertical Microwave Fields
• Current-controlled creations, deletions, and topological transformations of a single magnetic antiskyrmion in nanostructured cells
• Symmetry-Governed Dynamics of Magnetic Skyrmions Under Field Pulses
• Skyrmion-Antiskyrmion Lattice: A Net-Zero Topological Phase in Low-Symmetry Frustrated Chiral Magnets
• Design of 2D Skyrmionic Metamaterial Through Controlled Assembly
• Skyrmionic Schrödinger cat states in monoaxial chiral magnets
• Paradoxical Topological Soliton Lattice in Anisotropic Frustrated Chiral Magnets