Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 8, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00659-5
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Funding
- National Science Foundation [DMR-1410735]
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Skyrmions are topologically protected continuous field configurations that cannot be smoothly transformed to a uniform state. They behave like particles and give origins to the field of skyrmionics that promises racetrack memory and other technological applications. Unraveling the non-equilibrium behavior of such topological solitons is a challenge. We realize skyrmions in a chiral liquid crystal and, using numerical modeling and polarized video microscopy, demonstrate electrically driven squirming motion. We reveal the intricate details of non-equilibrium topology-preserving textural changes driving this behavior. Direction of the skyrmion's motion is robustly controlled in a plane orthogonal to the applied field and can be reversed by varying frequency. Our findings may spur a paradigm of soliton dynamics in soft matter, with a rich interplay between topology, chirality, and orientational viscoelasticity.
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