We show that properly engineered amorphous Fe-Gd alloy thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy exhibit room-temperature skyrmion molecules, or a pair of like-polarity, opposite-helicity skyrmions. Magnetic mirror symmetry planes present in the stripe phase, instead of chiral exchange, determine the internal skyrmion structure and the net achirality of the skyrmion phase. Our study shows that stripe domain engineering in amorphous alloy thin films may enable the creation of skyrmion phases with technologically desirable properties.
@article{arxiv.1603.07882,
title = {Synthesizing Skyrmion Molecules in Fe-Gd Thin Films},
author = {J. C. T Lee and J. J. Chess and S. A. Montoya and X. Shi and N. Tamura and S. K. Mishra and P. Fischer and B. J. McMorran and S. K. Sinha and E. E. Fullerton and S. D. Kevan and S. Roy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.07882},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
15 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letters