Creation, annihilation and transport of nonmagnetic antiskyrmions within Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the existence, creation, and manipulation of antiskyrmions in ferroelectric materials using phase-field simulations based on the Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model, revealing their topological properties and dynamics.

Contribution

It confirms antiskyrmions as local minima in a widely used phase-field model and explores electric field control of their creation, movement, and annihilation.

Findings

Antiskyrmions exist as local minima in the Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model.

Electric fields can create and move antiskyrmions within ferroelectric matrices.

Antiskyrmion annihilation involves discrete intermediate states with distinct radii.

Abstract

Atomistic model calculations recently revealed that the polarization pattern at the cross-section through nanoscale ferroelectric nanodomains in rhombohedral barium titanate shows a clear antiskyrmion attributes such as the net invariant topological charge of minus two. The present work confirms that these topological defects also exist as local minima in the discretized Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model, which is widely used in the phase-field modeling studies. We explore by phase-field simulations how an electric field can be used to create or move antiskyrmions within a monodomain ferroelectric matrix. The process of the field-induced antiskyrmion annihilation reveals the existence of a discrete ladder of intermediate antiskyrmion states with distinct radii but common symmetry, topology and geometrical properties.