Phase shift in skyrmion crystals.

Abstract

The magnetic skyrmion crystal is a periodic array of a swirling topological spin texture. Since it is regarded as an interference pattern by multiple helical spin density waves, the texture changes with the relative phase shifts among the constituent waves. Although such a phase degree of freedom is relevant to not only magnetism but also transport properties, its effect has not been elucidated thus far. We here theoretically show that a phase shift in the skyrmion crystals leads to a tetra-axial vortex crystal and a meron-antimeron crystal, both of which show a staggered pattern of the scalar spin chirality and give rise to nonreciprocal transport phenomena without the spin-orbit coupling. We demonstrate that such a phase shift can be driven by exchange interactions between the localized spins, thermal fluctuations, and long-range chirality interactions in spin-charge coupled systems. Our results provide a further diversity of topological spin textures and open a new field of emergent electromagnetism by the phase shift engineering.