Short electron pulses are demonstrated to trigger and control magnetic excitations, even at low electron current densities. We show that the tangential magnetic field surrounding a picosecond electron pulse can imprint topologically protected magnetic textures such as skyrmions in a sample with a residual Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya spin-orbital coupling. Characteristics of the created excitations such as the topological charge can be steered via the duration and the strength of the electron pulses. The study points to a possible way for a spatio-temporally controlled generation of skyrmionic excitations.
@article{arxiv.1706.08288,
title = {Ultrafast imprinting of topologically protected magnetic textures via pulsed electrons},
author = {A. F. Schäffer and H. A. Dürr and J. Berakdar},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.08288},
year = {2017}
}