Properties and dynamics of meron topological spin textures in the two-dimensional magnet CrCl3

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the spontaneous emergence and dynamic behavior of meron and antimeron topological spin textures in the two-dimensional magnet CrCl3, revealing their creation, diffusion, and collision processes at zero magnetic field.

Contribution

It provides the first direct observation and detailed analysis of merons in a 2D magnet, highlighting their formation, stability, and dynamics driven by magnetic frustration and dipolar interactions.

Findings

Merons and antimerons are spontaneously stabilized during cooling in CrCl3.

Their dynamics involve creation, diffusion, and collision, affecting magnetic domain evolution.

The vortex core size is approximately 8-10 nm, influenced by magnetic interactions.

Abstract

Merons are nontrivial topological spin textures highly relevant for many phenomena in solid state physics. Despite their importance, direct observation of such vortex quasiparticles is scarce and has been limited to a few complex materials. Here we show the emergence of merons and antimerons in recently discovered two-dimensional (2D) CrCl3 at zero magnetic field. We show their entire evolution from pair creation, their diffusion over metastable domain walls, and collision leading to large magnetic monodomains. Both quasiparticles are stabilized spontaneously during cooling at regions where in-plane magnetic frustration takes place. Their dynamics is determined by the interplay between the strong in-plane dipolar interactions and the weak out-of-plane magnetic anisotropy stabilising a vortex core within a radius of 8-10 nm. Our results push the boundary to what is currently known about non-trivial spin structures in 2D magnets and open exciting opportunities to control magnetic domains via topological quasiparticles.