Melting and Freezing of a Skyrmion Lattice

Abstract

We report comprehensive Monte-Carlo studies of the melting of skyrmion lattices in systems of small, medium, and large sizes with the number of skyrmions ranging from $10^3$ to over $10^5$. Large systems exhibit hysteresis similar to that observed in real experiments on the melting of skyrmion lattices. For sufficiently small systems which achieve thermal equilibrium, a fully reversible sharp solid-liquid transition on temperature with no intermediate hexatic phase is observed. A similar behavior is found on changing the magnetic field that provides the control of pressure in the skyrmion lattice. We find that on heating the melting transition occurs via a formation of grains with different orientations of hexagonal axes. On cooling, the fluctuating grains coalesce into larger clusters until a uniform orientation of hexagonal axes is slowly established. The observed scenario is caused by collective effects involving defects and is more complex than a simple picture of a transition driven by the unbinding and annihilation of dislocation and disclination pairs.

15 pages PR style, 26 figures (16 figure captions)

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Skyrmion Crystal in a Microwave Field
• Energy minima and ordering in ferromagnets with quenched randomness
• Topological transition and emergent elasticity of dislocation in skyrmion lattice: Beyond Kittel's magnetic-polar analogy
• Chiral electronic network within skyrmionic lattice on topological insulator surfaces