Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 177205 (2013)

Credit: © 2013 APS

Complex spin textures such as skyrmions have recently garnered the attention of condensed-matter physicists. Named after the particle physicist Tony Skyrme, these solitonic excitations share the same topology as a set of magnetic moments wrapped around a sphere, but projected onto a plane. The ingredients necessary to stabilize them in a magnetic system have been known for some time, most notably a weak but asymmetric effect known as the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, but the degree to which they are stable to external perturbations has come as a surprise. Another ingredient that was thought to be essential to their formation is an externally applied magnetic field. Now, Marco Finazzi and colleagues demonstrate that this is not the case, by using a laser to stabilize skyrmions and related spin textures in a thin alloy film consisting of terbium, iron and copper. The stabilization occurs as a result of the combination of short- and long-range interactions present in the film, and suggests skyrmions may be easier to manipulate than previously thought.