Magnetic skyrmion crystals are traditionally associated with non-centrosymmetric crystal structures; however, it has been demonstrated that skyrmion crystals can be stabilized by competing interactions in centrosymmetric crystals. To understand and optimize the physical responses associated with topologically-nontrivial skyrmion textures, it is important to quantify their magnetic interactions by comparing theoretical predictions with spectroscopic data. Here, we present neutron diffraction and spectroscopy data on the centrosymmetric skyrmion material GdRu2Si2, and show that the key spectroscopic features can be explained by the magnetic interactions calculated using density-functional theory calculations. We further show that the recently-proposed 2-q "topological spin stripe" structure yields better agreement with our data than a 1-q helical structure, and identify how the magnetic structure evolves with temperature.
@article{arxiv.2406.04524,
title = {Spin Dynamics of the Centrosymmetric Skyrmion Material GdRu2Si2},
author = {Joseph A. M. Paddison and Juba Bouaziz and Andrew F. May and Qiang Zhang and Stuart Calder and Douglas Abernathy and Julie B. Staunton and Stefan Blügel and Andrew D. Christianson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.04524},
year = {2024}
}