Compact merons and skyrmions in thin chiral magnetic films

Abstract

A meron is a controversial topological excitation because it carries just one-half of the skyrmion number. A vortex in thin magnetic films has been argued to be a half-skyrmion, i.e., a meron. We present another type of merons, investigating the two-dimensional nonlinear sigma model together with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Here, the vortex number of a meron is zero. Basic topological excitations are merons and skyrmions. They behave as if they were free particles. A prominent feature is that the topological charge density is strictly confined within compact domains. We propose an analytic approach for these compact excitations, and construct a phase diagram. It is comprised of the helix, meron, skyrmion-crystal, skyrmion-gas, and ferromagnet phases. It captures the essential nature of the experimental data recently performed in chiral magnets such as MnSi and FeCoSi thin films.