Emergence of a Skyrmion Phase in a Frustrated Heisenberg Antiferromagnet with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction

Abstract

We study formation of a periodical structure of quasiparticle-like magnetic configurations with non-trivial topological charge, known as a magnetic skyrmion phase, on a frustrated triangular lattice antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The existence of such a phase, formed on the three interpenetrating sublattices, has been demonstrated for a sufficiently large strength of DMI. The goal of the present investigation is to establish the minimum values of both the DM interaction strength as well as the magnetic field intensity at which such a skyrmion phase can exist at very low temperatures (close to zero). We find that the skyrmion phase emerges above the DMI parameter value of $D = 0.2$ and persists within the field intensity $2 \lesssim h < 4.5$.