Liquid crystal Skyrmions can swim

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that baby skyrmions in chiral liquid crystals can be electrically driven to swim, revealing complex non-equilibrium behaviors and controllable motion, which could impact soliton dynamics in soft matter.

Contribution

The study provides the first experimental and numerical evidence of electrically driven skyrmion motion in liquid crystals, highlighting topology-preserving dynamics and controllable directionality.

Findings

Skyrmions exhibit electrically driven squirming motion.

Motion direction can be reversed by changing frequency.

Non-equilibrium textural changes drive skyrmion swimming.

Abstract

Topologically nontrivial field configurations called "baby skyrmions" behave like particles and give origins to the field of skyrmionics that promises racetrack memory and other technological applications. Unraveling the non-equilibrium behavior of such topological solitons is a challenge. We realize baby skyrmions in a chiral liquid crystal and, using numerical modeling and polarized video microscopy, demonstrate electrically driven squirming motion. We reveal the intricate details of non-equilibrium topology-preserving textural changes driving this behavior. Direction of the skyrmion's motion is robustly controlled in a plane orthogonal to the applied field and can be reversed by varying frequency. Our findings may spur a new paradigm of soliton dynamics in soft matter, with a rich interplay between topology, chirality, and orientational viscoelasticity.