Magnetic skyrmions are topological solitons with a nanoscale winding spin texture that hold promise for spintronics applications 1 – 4 . Skyrmions have so far been observed in a variety of magnets that exhibit nearly parallel alignment for neighbouring spins, but theoretically skyrmions with anti-parallel neighbouring spins are also possible. Such antiferromagnetic skyrmions may allow more flexible control than conventional ferromagnetic skyrmions 5 – 10 . Here, by combining neutron scattering measurements and Monte Carlo simulations, we show that a fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmion lattice is stabilized in MnSc 2 S 4 through anisotropic couplings. The observed lattice is composed of three antiferromagnetically coupled sublattices, and each sublattice is a triangular skyrmion lattice that is fractionalized into two parts with an incipient meron (half-skyrmion) character 11 , 12 . Our work demonstrates that the theoretically proposed antiferromagnetic skyrmions can be stabilized in real materials and represents an important step towards their implementation in spintronic devices. Theoretically predicted fractional antiferromagnetic skyrmions are experimentally realized in MnSc 2 S 4 and are found to originate from anisotropic couplings over nearest neighbours in the crystal lattice.

中文翻译：

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由各向异性耦合引起的分数反铁磁斯格明子晶格

磁性斯格明子是具有纳米级缠绕自旋纹理的拓扑孤子，有望用于自旋电子学应用 1 – 4 。迄今为止，已经在各种磁铁中观察到了 Skyrmions，这些磁铁对相邻自旋表现出几乎平行的排列，但理论上，具有反平行相邻自旋的 Skyrmions 也是可能的。这种反铁磁斯格明子可以允许比传统的铁磁斯格明子 5 - 10 更灵活的控制。在这里，通过结合中子散射测量和蒙特卡罗模拟，我们表明分数反铁磁斯格明子晶格通过各向异性耦合稳定在 MnSc 2 S 4 中。观察到的晶格由三个反铁磁耦​​合的亚晶格组成，并且每个子晶格是一个三角形的斯格明子格子，它被分成两部分，具有初始的梅隆（半斯格明子）字符 11 , 12 。我们的工作表明，理论上提出的反铁磁斯格明子可以在真实材料中稳定，这代表了它们在自旋电子器件中实现的重要一步。理论上预测的分数反铁磁斯格明子在 MnSc 2 S 4 中通过实验实现，并且发现源自晶格中最近邻的各向异性耦合。