Bound states of skyrmions and merons near the Lifshitz point

Abstract

We study topological defects in anisotropic ferromagnets with competing interactions near the Lifshitz point. We show that skyrmions and bi-merons are stable in a large part of the phase diagram. We calculate skyrmion-skyrmion and meron-meron interactions and show that skyrmions attract each other and form ring-shaped bound states in a zero magnetic field. At the Lifshitz point merons carrying a fractional topological charge become deconfined. These results imply that unusual topological excitations may exist in weakly frustrated magnets with conventional crystal lattices.