Figure 3
From: Thermal stability and topological protection of skyrmions in nanotracks
Minimum energy paths of a skyrmion in a cobalt nanotrack. The DMI constant of the system is D = 0.676 meV of magnitude. There are two different paths: a skyrmion annihilation at a boundary and a symmetrical skyrmion collapse. (a) Images of the band for the boundary annihilation, annotated according to the numbers in the corresponding curve in (b). The colour scale refers to the out of plane (z) component of the magnetisation field. (b) Energy bands for both minimum energy paths as a function of the distance from the first image (left extreme of the bands). The top scale refers to the skyrmion collapse case. (c) Images of the band for the skyrmion collapse. (d) Topological charge (skyrmion number) Q as a function of the images distances for the cases depicted in (b). The top scale refers to the skyrmion collapse case.
