Skyrmions in Synthetic Antiferromagnets: Collapse and Nucleation

Abstract

Magnetic skyrmions in synthetic antiferromagnets are promising nanoscale bits, but their usefulness depends on how reliably a written pair survives and can be created. Using a reduced lattice model, we compute minimum energy paths for collapse of an antiferromagnetically bound skyrmion pair and for reverse nucleation from a pinned antiferromagnetic reference state. With antiferromagnetically pinned boundaries, the main saddle energy changes only weakly with pinned-island size, whereas the skyrmion-pair minimum carries a strong size-dependent boundary penalty. For large pinned islands, collapse is layer-sequential and can pass through a single-layer skyrmion intermediate whenever this state satisfies the relaxation criterion. The much larger reverse barrier for nucleation shows a strong asymmetry with collapse in the same pinned-boundary model and is consistent with assisted layer-sequential writing.