Magnon edge states of skyrmion crystal in non-uniform magnetic field

Abstract

A regular lattice of magnetic skyrmions is the ground state of thin ferromagnetic films with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in a relatively wide range of external magnetic fields. It was previously theoretically shown that upon the increase of magnetic field a topological transition in the magnon spectrum of such skyrmion crystal (SkX) may occur. Non-uniform magnetic field may lead to localized magnon states emerging at the interface between two half-planes of SkX. Using semiclassical quantization and the stereographic projection approach, we study such appearing edge states both in a full band structure calculation and in simplified effective model. The latter effective model described by extended Dirac equation is applicable to two relevant magnon bands near $Γ$ point. We show that both the chirality of emerging edge states and the degree of its localization at the interface is controlled by magnetic field profile. We demonstrate that the localization length may be as small as a few inter-skyrmion distances.