Bound states of skyrmions and merons near the Lifshitz point

2017/03/27 by Y. A. Kharkov, O. P. Sushkov, M. Mostovoy · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el #nlin.PS #nucl-th #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.119.207201

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 207201 (2017) · 5 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2017/03/27 · arxiv updated 2017/11/22

Abstract

We study topological defects in anisotropic ferromagnets with competing interactions near the Lifshitz point. We show that skyrmions and bi-merons are stable in a large part of the phase diagram. We calculate skyrmion-skyrmion and meron-meron interactions and show that skyrmions attract each other and form ring-shaped bound states in a zero magnetic field. At the Lifshitz point merons carrying a fractional topological charge become deconfined. These results imply that unusual topological excitations may exist in weakly frustrated magnets with conventional crystal lattices.

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