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Condensed Matter Physics

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2015

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Charged Skyrmions On The Surface Of A Topological Insulator, Hilary M. Hurst, Dimitry K. Efimkin, Jiadong Zang, Victor Galitski Feb 2015

Charged Skyrmions On The Surface Of A Topological Insulator, Hilary M. Hurst, Dimitry K. Efimkin, Jiadong Zang, Victor Galitski

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

We consider the interplay between magnetic skyrmions in an insulating thin film and the Dirac surface states of a 3D topological insulator (TI), coupled by proximity effect. The magnetic texture of skyrmions can lead to confinement of Dirac states at the skyrmion radius, where out of plane magnetization vanishes. This confinement can result in charging of the skyrmion texture. The presence of bound states is robust in an external magnetic field, which is needed to stabilize skyrmions. It is expected that for relevant experimental parameters skyrmions will have a few bound states that can be tuned using an external magnetic …