English

Skyrmion Glass in a Disordered Magnetic Film

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2017-10-31 v1

Abstract

We show that high concentration of skyrmions can be achieved in magnetic films with quenched disorder. A 2D system of Heisenberg spins with feromagnetic exchange, JJ, and random magnetic anisotropy of strength DRJD_R \ll J has been studied. Analytical theory for the dependence of the average skyrmion size on the magnetic field HH, and for the stability of pinned skyrmions, is complemented by numerical studies of 2D lattices containing up to 40 million spins. At low fields the average size of the skyrmion, λ\lambda, is determined by the average size of Imry-Ma domains. On increasing the field the skyrmions first shrink, with λDR/H\lambda \propto D_R/H, and then collapse at fields distributed around HcDR4/3H_c \propto D_R^{4/3}. Concentration of the skyrmions goes down with the field as exp[(H/Hc)3/2]\exp[-(H/H_c)^{3/2}].

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1710.10608,
  title  = {Skyrmion Glass in a Disordered Magnetic Film},
  author = {E. M. Chudnovsky and D. A. Garanin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.10608},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages, 6 figures