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Giant enhancement of the skyrmion stability in a chemically strained helimagnet

A. S. Sukhanov, Praveen Vir, A. Heinemann, S. E. Nikitin, D. Kriegner, H. Borrmann, C. Shekhar, C. Felser, and D. S. Inosov
Phys. Rev. B 100, 180403(R) – Published 11 November 2019
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Abstract

We employed small-angle neutron scattering to demonstrate that the magnetic skyrmion lattice can be realized in bulk chiral magnets as a thermodynamically stable state at temperatures much lower than the ordering temperature of the material. This is in the regime where temperature fluctuations become completely irrelevant to the formation of the topologically nontrivial magnetic texture. In this attempt we focused on the model helimagnet MnSi, in which the skyrmion lattice was previously well characterized and shown to exist only in a very narrow phase pocket close to the Curie temperature of 29.5 K. We revealed that large uniaxial distortions caused by the crystal-lattice strain in MnSi result in stabilization of the skyrmion lattice in magnetic fields applied perpendicular to the uniaxial strain at temperatures as low as 5 K. To study the bulk chiral magnet subjected to a large uniaxial stress, we have utilized micrometer-sized single-crystalline inclusions of MnSi naturally found inside single crystals of the nonmagnetic material Mn11Si19. The reciprocal-space imaging allowed us to unambiguously identify the stabilization of the skyrmion state over the competing conical spin spiral.

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  • Received 18 December 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.180403

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

A. S. Sukhanov1,2,*, Praveen Vir1,*, A. Heinemann3, S. E. Nikitin1, D. Kriegner1, H. Borrmann1, C. Shekhar1, C. Felser1, and D. S. Inosov2

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, D-01187 Dresden, Germany
  • 2Institut für Festkörper- und Materialphysik, Technische Universität Dresden, D-01069 Dresden, Germany
  • 3German Engineering Materials Science Centre (GEMS) at Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ), Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht GmbH, D-85747 Garching, Germany

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.

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Issue

Vol. 100, Iss. 18 — 1 November 2019

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