Contributor info: Dr Anne Bernand-Mantel

Anne Bernand-Mantel, Lorenzo Camosi, Alexis Wartelle, Nicolas Rougemaille, Michaël Darques, Laurent Ranno

SciPost Phys. 4, 027 (2018) · published 25 May 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Magnetic skyrmions and bubbles, observed in ferromagnetic thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, are topological solitons which differ by their characteristic size and the balance in the energies at the origin of their stabilisation. However, these two spin textures have the same topology and a continuous transformation between them is allowed. In the present work, we derive an analytical model to explore the skyrmion-bubble transition. We evidence a region in the parameter space where both topological soliton solutions coexist and close to which transformations between skyrmion and bubbles are observed as a function of the magnetic field. Above a critical point, at which the energy barrier separating both solutions vanishes, only one topological soliton solution remains, which size can be continuously tuned from micrometer to nanometer with applied magnetic field.