Various transitions that a magnetic skyrmion can undergo are found in calculations using a method for climbing up the energy surface and converging onto first order saddle points. In addition to collapse and escape through a boundary, the method identifies a transition where the skyrmion divides and forms two skyrmions. The activation energy for this duplication process can be similar to that of collapse and escape. A tilting of the external magnetic field for a certain time interval is found to induce the duplication process in a dynamical simulation. Such a process could turn out to be an important avenue for the creation of skyrmions in future magnetic devices.
@article{arxiv.1807.11550,
title = {Duplication, collapse and escape of magnetic skyrmions revealed using a systematic saddle point search method},
author = {Gideon P. Müller and Pavel F. Bessarab and Sergei M. Vlasov and Fabian R. Lux and Nikolai S. Kiselev and Stefan Blügel and Valery M. Uzdin and Hannes Jónsson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1807.11550},
year = {2018}
}