Manipulation of skyrmions in nanodisks with a current pulse and skyrmion rectifier

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how to manipulate skyrmions in nanodisks using current pulses and dc currents, enabling skyrmion creation, removal, and a rectification effect that converts ac currents into dc voltage.

Contribution

It introduces a method to control skyrmions solely with currents and reveals a skyrmion-based rectifier effect in nanodisks.

Findings

Skyrmions can be created by current pulses.

Skyrmions can be removed with dc currents.

A rectification effect generates dc voltage from ac current.

Abstract

A skyrmion in a nanosized disk of a chiral magnet can be used as a bit of information. To this end, it is desirable to control the creation and removal of a skyrmion only by currents without using external magnetic fields. Here we propose to create a skyrmion by applying a current pulse to a nanodisk. The skyrmion can be removed from the disk by applying a dc current. We show that the dynamics of the created skyrmion can lead to a rectification effect, in which a dc voltage is generated by the motion of skyrmion in the presence of an ac current.