We discover magnetic phases hosting highly-elusive and technologically important antiferromagnetic skyrmion quasiparicles in a model for Rashba-coupled Hund's insulator. The results are based on unbiased simulations of a classical superexchange model derived, in this work, from a realistic microscopic electronic Hamiltonian. We also discover a novel skyrmion density wave groundstate characterized by a ($Q,Q$) modulation in the local skyrmion density map. A unique inhomogeneous state characterized by a circular pattern in spin structure factor and filamentary real-space textures is identified as the parent of sparse antiferromagnetic skyrmions. We predict that the magnetic states reported here can be realized in thin films of multiorbital systems involving $4d$ or $5d$ transition metals.
We report a microscopic electronic mechanism for nanoscale skyrmion formation and topological metalicity. The mechanism, which relies on combining the classic double-exchange (DE) physics with the Rashba spin orbit coupling (SOC), not only provides an accurate understanding of existence of skyrmions but also explains key features in small angle neutron scattering (SANS) and Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (LTEM) data on thin films of a variety of magnetic metals. The skyrmion states are characterized as disordered topological metals via explicit calculations of Bott index and Hall con…
Motivated by the importance of antiferromagnetic skyrmions as building blocks of next-generation data storage and processing devices, we report theoretical and computational analysis of a model for a spin-orbit coupled correlated magnet on a triangular lattice. We find that two distinct antiferromagnetic skyrmion crystal (AF-SkX) states can be stabilized at low temperatures in the presence of external magnetic field. The results are obtained via Monte Carlo simulations on an effective magnetic model derived from the microscopic electronic Hamiltonian consisting of Rashba spin-orbit coupling, a…
Engineering non trivial topological phases in materials, specially skyrmion-like arrangements, has been of great interest in the last decade due to its potential technological applications. In this work, we study a model of electrons coupled to a magnetic texture in the kagome lattice interacting with magnetic moments via Rashba spin orbit coupling in the large Hund interaction limit. We obtain the effective spin Hamiltonian and study the emergent low temperature phases under an external magnetic field using large scale Monte Carlo simulations. We show that strong geometric frustration, charac…
We theoretically study noncoplanar spin textures in polar magnetic conductors. Starting from the Kondo lattice model with the Rashba spin-orbit coupling, we derive an effective spin model with generalized Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interactions including the anisotropic and antisymmetric exchange interactions. By performing simulated annealing for the effective model, we find that a vortex crystal of Néel type is stabilized even in the absence of a magnetic field. Moreover, we demonstrate that a Bloch-type vortex crystal, which is usually associated with the Dresselhaus spin-orbit coupling,…
We study the system of strongly interacting spinor bosons in a square lattice subject to the isotropic Rashba SOC $ α=β$. It supports collinear spin-bond correlated magnetic Y-x phase, a gapped in-commensurate (IC-) co-planar IC-XY-y phase, a non-coplanar commensurate (C-) $ 3 \times 3 $ Skyrmion crystal phase (SkX). The state at the Abelian point $ α=β=π/2 $ is just an AFM state in a rotated basis. Slightly away from the point, we identify a spurious $ U(1) $ symmetry, develop a novel and non-perturbative method to calculate not only the gap, but also the excitation spectrum due to the order …
Planar Josephson junctions provide a versatile platform, alternative to the nanowire-based geometry, for the generation of the Majorana bound states, due to the additional phase tunability of the topological superconductivity. The proximity induction of chiral magnetism and superconductivity in a two-dimensional electron gas showed remarkable promises to manipulate topological superconductivity. Here, we consider a Josephson junction involving a skyrmion crystal and show that the chiral magnetism of the skyrmions can create and control the Majorana bound states without the requirement of an in…
The topological Hall effect (THE), given by a composite of electric and topologically non-trivial spin texture is commonly observed in magnetic skyrmion crystals. Here we present a study of the THE of electrons coupled to antiferromagnetic Skyrmion lattices (AF-SkX). We show that, in the strong Hund coupling limit, topologically non-trivial phases emerge at specific fillings. Interestingly, at low filling an external field controlling the magnetic texture, drives the system from a conventional insulator phase to a phase exhibiting THE. Such behavior suggests the occurrence of a topological tra…
Motivated by recent experiments in Gd$_3$Ru$_4$Al$_{12}$, we demonstrate the emergence of atomic scale Skyrmions in interacting spins on a breathing kagome lattice with competing nearest neighbor ferromagnetic and next nearest neighbor antiferromagnetic exchange interactions. In the presence of an applied longitudinal magnetic field, the ground state magnetic order evolves from a helical phase at low fields to a Skyrmion phase at intermediate fields before finally entering a polarized phase at high fields. The size of each Skyrmion spans only two unit cells of the lattice, in contrast to tens …
We study magnetic textures realized in noncentrosymmetric Kondo lattice models, in which localized magnetic moments weakly interact with itinerant electrons subject to Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. By virtue of state-of-the-art numerical simulations as well as variational calculations, we uncover versatile multiple-$Q$ orderings under zero magnetic field, which are found to originate in the instabilities of the Fermi surface whose spin degeneracy is lifted by the spin-orbit couplings. In the case with equally-strong Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings, which is known to …
In this work, we study strongly interacting spinor atoms in a lattice subject to a 2 dimensional (2d) anisotropic Rashba type of spin orbital coupling (SOC) and an Zeeman field. We find the interplay between the Zeeman field and the SOC provides a new platform to host rich and novel classes of quantum commensurate and in-commensurate phases, excitations and phase transitions. These commensurate phases include two collinear states at low and high Zeeman field, two co-planar canted states at Mirror reflected SOC parameters respectively. Most importantly, there are non-coplanar incommensurate Sky…
