2025/02/18 by Luca Maranzana, Maranzana, Luca, Maxim Mostovoy +5
Materials Science · #FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Multiferroics and related materials #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2502.13083
openalex publication_date 2025/02/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Precise positioning of topological defects is essential for racetrack memories, where their positions along a magnetic nanotrack encode information. Traditional methods achieve nanometric precision by engineering pinning landscapes that enforce discrete steps in defect motion. However, accessing each bit requires overcoming a depinning threshold, which increases power consumption. Here, we demonstrate that spiral magnets provide a natural ruler, enabling precise positioning of bimerons (topological spin textures analogous to skyrmions) without relying on engineered pinning sites. A rotating magnetic field couples directly to the bimeron position, displacing it by exactly one spiral period per full rotation of the field. Such quantized transport of skyrmionic textures, reminiscent of Thouless pumping, is topologically protected and remains robust against perturbations, positioning spiral magnets as a natural skyrmion racetrack. The findings establish a paradigm for topologically protected transport of spin textures.