Stability of single skyrmionic bits.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26465211.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms9455 and PMC identifier 4634135.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The switching between topologically distinct skyrmionic and ferromagnetic states has been proposed as a bit operation for information storage. While long lifetimes of the bits are required for data storage devices, the lifetimes of skyrmions have not been addressed so far. Here we show by means of atomistic Monte Carlo simulations that the field-dependent mean lifetimes of the skyrmionic and ferromagnetic states have a high asymmetry with respect to the critical magnetic field, at which these lifetimes are identical. According to our calculations, the main reason for the enhanced stability of skyrmions is a different field dependence of skyrmionic and ferromagnetic activation energies and a lower attempt frequency of skyrmions rather than the height of energy barriers. We use this knowledge to propose a procedure for the determination of effective material parameters and the quantification of the Monte Carlo timescale from the comparison of theoretical and experimental data.