Study of skyrmions stability in strained VTe2 monolayer using DFT calculations and Monte-Carlo simulations

Abstract

The structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the H-VTe2 monolayer under external strain have been studied by first-principles approaches with Hubbard U corrections combined with Monte Carlo (MC) simulation. We investigated the magnetic spin textures in the VTe2 monolayer using the Heisenberg Hamiltonian, which includes the ferromagnetic interaction J, magnetic anisotropy K, Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction DMI, and the applied magnetic field B. We have numerically verified that the skyrmion can be created by the competition between these different interactions. At T = 0 K, the ground state (GS) is determined by minimizing the interaction energy and showing that the transition phase occurs at about Tc= 555 K. Also, we have demonstrated that if a magnetic field, has a direction opposite to the magnetic moment of the skyrmion center, attains a critical value Bc, the core of the skyrmion inverses the direction of its magnetization in order to recover the FM ground state. Moreover, we have studied the phase diagram in the plane (B,DMI). We have deduced that for a certain range of the DMI a skyrmion crystal can be stabilized within a certain range of the magnetic fields. Finally, we investigated the effect of the external magnetic field on the properties of the skyrmions, such as the skyrmion number (Nsky) and diameter (d).