Particle-like skyrmions interacting with a funnel obstacle

Abstract

The skyrmion-substrate interaction is an important issue to consider when studying particle-like skyrmions in nanostructures, which may strongly affect the skyrmion dynamics and lead to complex dynamic phenomena. Here, we report the current-driven dynamic behaviors of particle-like skyrmions interacting with the funnel obstacle in a ferromagnetic layer. We computationally demonstrate that a funnel obstacle with enhanced perpendicular magnetic anisotropy can be used to modify the dynamics of skyrmions due to the repulsive skyrmion-funnel interaction, which could generate several nontrivial effects, including the compression, clogging, annihilation, guided motion, and capturing of skyrmions. It is also found that the funnel obstacle can separate an incoming flow of skyrmions into two asymmetric flows. Moreover, we show that it is possible to capture skyrmions by the funnel obstacle in both static and dynamic ways. Our results are useful for understanding the skyrmion dynamics interacting with the substrate and could provide guidelines for the control of skyrmion flows in a transmission channel.