English

Coupled skyrmion sublattices in Cu2OSeO3

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2015-06-18 v2 Materials Science

Abstract

We report the observation of the skyrmion lattice in the chiral multiferroic insulator Cu2OSeO3 using Cu L3-edge resonant soft x-ray diffraction. We observe the unexpected existence of two distinct skyrmion sublattices that arise from inequivalent Cu sites with chemically identical coordination numbers but different magnetically active orbitals. The skyrmion sublattices are rotated with respect to each other implying a long wavelength modulation of the lattice. The modulation vector could be controlled with an applied magnetic field, associating this Moire-like phase with a continuous phase transition. Our findings will open a new class of science involving manipulation of quantum topological states.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.2947,
  title  = {Coupled skyrmion sublattices in Cu2OSeO3},
  author = {M. C. Langner and S. Roy and S. K. Mishra and J. C. T. Lee and X. W. Shi and M. A. Hossain and Y. -D. Chuang and S. Seki and Y. Tokura and S. D. Kevan and R. W. Schoenlein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.2947},
  year   = {2015}
}