Revival of antibiskyrmionic magnetic phases in bilayer NiI$_2$

TL;DR

This study uses atomistic simulations to reveal that bilayer NiI$_2$ hosts stable biskyrmions due to magnetic frustration, with potential for experimental detection via polarization measurements, expanding understanding of skyrmion stabilization in inversion-symmetric systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates the stabilization of biskyrmions in bilayer NiI$_2$ through magnetic frustration, highlighting their enhanced stability over monolayers and proposing polarization as an indirect detection method.

Findings

Biskyrmions are stabilized in bilayer NiI$_2$ due to interlayer magnetic frustration.

Polarization in topologically nontrivial phases is negligible, aiding experimental detection.

Enhanced stability of in-plane component skyrmions compared to monolayer cases.

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected spin textures with potential applications in memory and logic devices. Skyrmions have been commonly observed in systems with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction due to broken inversion symmetry. Yet, recent studies suggest that skyrmions can also be stabilized in systems with inversion symmetry such as Ni-based dihalides due to magnetic frustration. In this article, we employ atomistic simulations to investigate chiral magnetic phases in bilayers of NiI$_2$ and NiBr$_2$. We show that the antiferromagnetic interlayer coupling introduces an additional magnetic frustration and gives rise to a variety of novel spin textures with different topological charges. Specifically for NiI$_2$, we observe that the skyrmions with the in-plane component of spins wrapping around twice (biskyrmions) have an enhanced stability compared to the monolayer case. We also study the polarization induced by the non-colinear magnetic order in NiI$_2$ bilayers and show that the polarization of the topologically nontrivial phases is negligible compared to the spiral phases. Thus, we conclude that polarization measurements can be an indirect route for detecting skyrmions in upcoming experiments.