Mesoscale phase separation of skyrmion-vortex matter in chiral magnet-superconductor heterostructures

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the equilibrium configurations of many magnetic skyrmions interacting with many superconducting vortices in a superconductor-chiral magnet bilayer. We show that miscible mixtures of vortices and skyrmions in this system breaks down at a particular wave number for sufficiently strong coupling, giving place to remarkably diverse mesoscale patterns: gel, stripes, clusters, intercalated stripes and composite gel-cluster structures. We also demonstrate that, by appropriate choice of parameters, one can thermally tune between the homogeneous and density-modulated phases.