Quantum Magnetic Skyrmions on Kondo-type Lattices

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum framework for understanding nanoskyrmions in 2D lattices with localized spins and itinerant electrons, highlighting how electron interactions influence skyrmion properties.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum description combining mean-field and tensor network methods to analyze nanoskyrmions with electron-spin coupling in 2D lattices.

Findings

Itinerant electrons significantly alter nanoskyrmion characteristics.

The approach is validated through benchmarks against exact solutions.

The framework allows exploration of out-of-equilibrium skyrmion behavior.

Abstract

A quantum description is given of nanoskyrmions in 2D textures with localised spins and itinerant electrons, isolated or coupled to leads, in or out-of-equilibrium. The spin-electron exchange is treated at the mean-field level, while Tensor Networks and exact diagonalization or nonequilibrium Green's functions are used for localised spins and itinerant electrons. We motivate our scheme via exact and mean-field benchmarks, then show by several examples that itinerant electrons distinctly affect the properties of quantum nanoskyrmions. Finally, we mention lines of future work and improvement of the approach.