Researchers report enhanced thermally-activated skyrmion diffusion with tunable effective gyrotropic force
Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, the University of Konstanz and Tohoku University in Japan have increased the diffusion of magnetic whirls, so called skyrmions, by a factor of ten.
Science often does not simply consider the spin of an individual electron, but rather magnetic whirls composed of numerous spins. These whirls, called skyrmions, emerge in magnetic metallic thin layers and can be considered as two-dimensional quasi-particles. On the one hand, the whirls can be deliberately moved by applying a small electric current to the thin layers; on the other hand, they move randomly and extremely efficiently due to diffusion. The feasibility of creating a functional computer based on skyrmions was demonstrated by a team of researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), led by Professor Dr. Mathias Kläui, using an initial prototype. This prototype consisted of thin, stacked metallic layers, some only a few atomic layers thick.