Article in Physical Review Letters

Journal Physical Review Letters published a paper “Dynamics and Topology of Symmetry Breaking with Skyrmions”, by Jaka Pišljar, Andriy Nych, Uliana Ognysta, Andrej Petelin, Samo Kralj and Igor Muševič, from J. Stefan Institute and Institute of Physics, Kyiv. The authors showed how the formation of the half-skyrmions-vortices from the high temperature isotropic phase dramatically changes as the chiral liquid crystal sample is confined to thickness below 100 nm. They observed unusally slow fluctuations, which represent spontanoeus formation and decay of individual half-skyrmions, also shown in the accompanying figure. The rate of such dynamics is 4 orders of magnitude slower of what was expected and is explained by the mechanism of thermal hopping between states, which become energetically accessible due to the strong confinement effects. This phenomenon is interesting from the topological point of view as well, as the experiments reveal the mechanisms of  topological charge conservation at the phase transition. The paper was also highlighted in the journal Physics.