Skyrmions, tiny swirls of magnetic polarization, hold promise for storing information. For that, researchers need to be able to control the swirling of these magnetic quasiparticles. Existing methods for manipulating the rotation of skyrmions involve heating the quasiparticles with a focused electron beam until their spins start moving. But such methods use substantial energy, can melt the crystal, and cannot easily control spin rotation, particularly at the timescales relevant for information storage. Now Phoebe Tengdin at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) and colleagues have demonstrated a method for fast, coherent control of the spin of an array of skyrmions [1].
To read more, click here.