Local Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interactions Driving Quasi-2D Magnetism in a Centrosymmetric Nanoskyrmion Material
Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 076706 (2025)
Matjaž Gomilšek has recently published a paper in collaboration with co-authors from the UK, Switzerland, Norway, Germany, Canada, and Japan. In the paper, they revealed a previously overlooked, “hidden” role of local chiral anisotropy in centrosymmetric topological magnets. Specifically, they found that local chiral anisotropy helps stabilize skyrmions and meron–antimeron pairs (different kinds of topological spin textures) in Gd2PdSi3, despite the material’s inversion symmetry, which precludes any global chirality.
In their study, they combined atomistic simulations of magnetic ordering with measurements of polarized resonant X-ray scattering (REXS) on Gd2PdSi3 at electron accelerators Diamond in the UK and PETRA III, DESY in Germany. The discovery represents an important step towards understanding centrosymmetric topological magnets, and greatly expands the possibilities for stabilizing topological spin textures in highly symmetrical materials.
