Dynamics of skyrmion in disordered chiral magnet of thin film form

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmion is a topological spin texture characterized by the mapping from the two dimensional real space to the unit sphere. It is realized in chiral magnets under an external magnetic field in the plane perpendicular to it. In thin film samples, which are most relevant to the applications, the thickness of the system parallel to the magnetic field is finite, and a skyrmion turns into a skyrmion string, which is often assumed to be a straight rod. There are phenomena related to the internal degrees of freedom along the string, e.g., the monopole and anti-monopole creation/annihilation, corresponding to the change in the skyrmion number. However, the role of this finite thickness in the topological stability and dynamics has not been explored yet. Here we study theoretically the current-driven dynamics of a skyrmion string under disorder potential by systematically changing the thickness of the sample to reveal the dynamical phase diagram in the plane of current density and thickness. We found the three regions, i.e., (i) pinned skyrmion string, (ii) moving depinned skyrmion string, and (iii) annihilation of skyrmion string, for thin and thick limits while (iii) is missing in the intermediate case. This indicates that there is the optimal range of thickness for the topological stability of skyrmion string enhanced compared with a two-dimensional skyrmion. This result provides a way to design and control skyrmions in thin films and interfaces of finite thickness.