Journal
SCIENCE ADVANCES
Volume 3, Issue 9, Pages -Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701704
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Funding
- DFG [TRR 80, CRC1238]
- ERC (European Research Council) AdG [291079]
- TUM (Technische Universitat Munchen) graduate school
- Telekomstiftung
- Bonn-Cologne Graduate School of Physics and Astronomy
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Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected whirls that decay through singular magnetic configurations known as Bloch points. We used Lorentz transmission electron microscopy to infer the energetics associated with the topological decay of magnetic skyrmions far from equilibrium in the chiral magnet Fe1-xCoxSi. We observed that the lifetime tau of the skyrmions depends exponentially on temperature, tau similar to tau(0) exp(Delta E/k(B)T). The prefactor tau(0) of this Arrhenius law changes by more than 30 orders of magnitude for small changes of the magnetic field, reflecting a substantial reduction of the lifetime of skyrmions by entropic effects and, thus, an extreme case of enthalpy-entropy compensation. Such compensation effects, being well known across many different scientific disciplines, affect topological transitions and, thus, topological protection on an unprecedented level.
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