Skyrmions formation due to unconventional magnetic modes in anisotropic multi-band superconductors

TL;DR

This paper explores how anisotropies in multiband superconductors can lead to the formation of Skyrmions, topological excitations with fractional vortices, expanding understanding of their complex topological structures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that anisotropies induce hybridization of modes, resulting in Skyrmionic solutions with nontrivial topological invariants in multiband superconductors.

Findings

Skyrmion solutions with various topological charges are robust across parameter ranges.

Anisotropies lead to hybridization of phase difference and magnetic modes.

Fractional vortices form bound textures carrying fractional flux.

Abstract

Multiband superconductors have a sufficient number of degrees of freedom to allow topological excitations characterized by Skyrmionic topological invariants. In the most common, clean s-wave multiband, systems the interband magnetic coupling favours composite vortex solutions, without a Skyrmionic topological charge. It was discussed recently that certain kinds of anisotropies lead to hybridisation of the interband phase difference (Leggett) mode with magnetic modes, dramatically changing the hydromagnetostatics of the system. Here we report this effect for a range of parameters that substantially alter the nature of the topological excitations, leading to solutions characterized by a nontrivial topological invariant, rather than the standard composite vortex solutions. This invariant is not truly topologically conserved but is energetically conserved, leading to a texture formed of bound excitations in each band, namely fractional vortices, each carrying a fraction of the flux quantum. We demonstrate that in this regime there is a rich spectrum of Skyrmion solutions, with various topological charges, that are robust with respect to changes of parameters of the system and present for a wide range of anisotropies.