Topological defects articles from across Nature Portfolio

Kekulé vortices in hexagonal lattices can host fractionalized charges at zero magnetic field, but have remained out of experimental reach. Here, the authors report a Kekulé vortex in the local density states of graphene around a chemisorbed hydrogen adatom.

The ferromagnet CrVI₆ serves as a material platform to demonstrate the topological Kerr effect in two-dimensional magnets. This can be used to identify skyrmions by magneto-optical means.

Large efforts have been placed on topological phases in non-Hermitian systems, where the appearance of exceptional points (EPs) and nontrivial Berry phase gather great interest. This study proposes an exhaustive classification framework for EPs, which connects eigenstate switching and Berry phase and reveals topological phase transitions accompanying EPs.

A local driving mechanism for solitons that accelerates both solitons and antisolitons in the same direction, called non-reciprocal driving, is introduced, showing a subtle interplay between non-reciprocity and topological solitons and providing waveguiding and wave-processing possibilities for other fields.

Fermi arcs show unpredictable diffraction features resulting from their long-range scattering order in aperiodic systems. Here, authors continuously twist a bi-block Weyl meta-crystal and experimentally observe the twisted Fermi arc reconstruction.

The antiferromagnetic material haematite, named for its blood-red colour, hosts swirling spin vortices termed merons. The rotation sense of such antiferromagnetic vortices has now been imaged in real space.

A paper in Nature Nanotechnology reports the room-temperature generation and control of meron–antimeron pairs in an antiferromagnet by means of electrical pulses.

A paper in Physical Review Letters presents images of a topological defect in a noncollinear antiferromagnet.

Liquid crystal defect structures with topology similar to a Möbius strip can rotate, translate and transform into one another under an applied electric field.

An article in Nature Electronics reports the generation, control and detection of magnetic skyrmions using thermal effects.