Dynamics of antiskyrmions induced by the voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy gradient

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions could serve as information carriers in next-generation information storage and processing devices. Effective manipulation of the skyrmion motion is a vital task for realizing skyrmion-based applications. Skyrmion motion driven by voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) has been proposed, of which the investigation is mostly focused on the dynamics of skyrmions. Here, using micromagnetic simulations we show that antiskyrmions can be effectively driven by the VCMA gradient in the presence of the anisotropic Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. We find that the antiskyrmion shows a transverse motion, i.e., the skyrmion Hall effect, induced by the VCMA gradient. As the skyrmion number of an antiskyrmion is opposite to that of a skyrmion, the anisotropy gradient-induced motion of ferromagnetically coupled skyrmion-antiskyrmion pair and antiferromagnetically coupled skyrmion-skyrmion and antiskyrmion-antiskyrmion pairs do not show the skyrmion Hall effect. We find that the velocity-driving force relations of these three combinations are different. Our results may provide guidelines for building future skyrmion-based information processing applications.