From chiral spin liquids to skyrmion fluids and crystals, and their interplay with itinerant electrons

Abstract

The physics of skyrmions, and in particular the issue of how to isolate and manipulate them individually, is a subject of major importance nowadays in the community of magnetism. In this article we present an in-depth extension of a study on this issue that was recently proposed by some of the authors [H. D. Rosales, et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 130, 106703 (2023)]. More precisely, we analyse the competition between skyrmions and a chiral spin liquid in a model on the kagome lattice. We first present an analytical overview of the low-energy states using the Luttinger-Tisza approximation. We then study the effect of thermal fluctuations thanks to large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations, and explore the entire parameter space with a magnetic field $B$, in-plane $D^{xy}$ and out-of-plane $D^z$ Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions. While skyrmions and the chiral spin liquid live in different regions of the parameter space, we show how to bring them together, stabilizing a skyrmion fluid in between; a region where the density of well-defined skyrmions can be tuned before obtaining an ordered phase. We investigate in particular the melting of the skyrmion solid. Our analysis also brings to light a long-range ordered phase with Z$_3$ symmetry. At last, we initiate the study of this rich magnetic background on conduction electrons that are coupled to the local spins. We study how the different chiral magnetic textures stabilized in this model (skyrmion solid, liquid and gas and chiral spin liquid) induce an anomalous Quantum Hall effect. We observe in the ordered skyrmion phase the appearance of Landau levels which persist even in the skyrmion-liquid regime and gradually disappear as the skyrmion density decreases to form a gas.