Ultrafast optical generation of antiferromagnetic meron-antimeron pairs with conservation of topological charge

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel ultrafast laser-induced mechanism for generating topologically conserved meron-antimeron pairs in antiferromagnets, expanding the scope of optically accessible spin textures beyond skyrmions.

Contribution

It presents a new thermal Schwinger mechanism for creating topologically conserved pairs in antiferromagnets using ultrafast laser pulses.

Findings

Meron-antimeron pairs can be generated ultrafast with laser pulses.

The topological structure persists for up to 100 ps.

Pair formation is robust against initial disorder and randomness.

Abstract

We propose a new mechanism to produce a meron-antimeron pair in a two dimensional antiferromagnet with an ultrafast laser pulse via thermal Schwinger mechanism. Unlike ultrafast skyrmion nucleation, this process conserves total topological charge. We systematically show different stages of the dynamics and define proper topological invariants to characterise the configurations. The emergent structure can retain its topological structure for up to 100 ps. By introducing a topological structure factor we show that pair formation is robust against any random choice of initial magnetic configuration and can survive against disorder. Our findings demonstrate that the rich world of spin textures, which goes beyond conventional skyrmions, can be reached optically.