title: Electrical probing of field-driven cascading quantized transitions of skyrmion cluster states in MnSi nanowires.
abstract: Magnetic skyrmions are topologically stable whirlpool-like spin textures that offer great promise as information carriers for future spintronic devices. To enable such applications, particular attention has been focused on the properties of skyrmions in highly confined geometries such as one-dimensional nanowires. Hitherto, it is still experimentally unclear what happens when the width of the nanowire is comparable to that of a single skyrmion. Here, we achieve this by measuring the magnetoresistance in ultra-narrow MnSi nanowires. We observe quantized jumps in magnetoresistance versus magnetic field curves. By tracking the size dependence of the jump number, we infer that skyrmions are assembled into cluster states with a tunable number of skyrmions, in agreement with the Monte Carlo simulations. Our results enable an electric reading of the number of skyrmions in the cluster states, thus laying a solid foundation to realize skyrmion-based memory devices.
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.
authors.forename: Haifeng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.
authors.forename: Chiming
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Institute of Fluid Physics, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Mianyang, Sichuan Province 621900, China.
authors.forename: Lingyao
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Matthew J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Stolt
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ning
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.
authors.forename: Jiyong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xing
authors.affiliation: International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Advanced Materials Laboratory, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
authors.forename: Renchao
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Che
authors.affiliation: Institute for Quantum Matter and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.|Department of Physics and Materials Science Program, University of New Hampshire, Durham, New Hampshire 03824, USA.
authors.forename: Jiadong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1101 University Avenue, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Song
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.|Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yuheng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Hefei, Anhui Province 230031, China.|Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province 210093, China.
authors.forename: Mingliang
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tian