title: Uniaxial stress control of skyrmion phase.
abstract: Magnetic skyrmions, swirling nanometric spin textures, have been attracting increasing attention by virtue of their potential applications for future memory technology and their emergent electromagnetism. Despite a variety of theoretical proposals oriented towards skyrmion-based electronics (that is, skyrmionics), few experiments have succeeded in creating, deleting and transferring skyrmions, and the manipulation methodologies have thus far remained limited to electric, magnetic and thermal stimuli. Here, we demonstrate a new approach for skyrmion phase control based on a mechanical stress. By continuously scanning uniaxial stress at low temperatures, we can create and annihilate a skyrmion crystal in a prototypical chiral magnet MnSi. The critical stress is merely several tens of MPa, which is easily accessible using the tip of a conventional cantilever. The present results offer a new guideline even for single skyrmion control that requires neither electric nor magnetic biases and consumes extremely little energy.
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nii
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6557-5508
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Nakajima
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kikkawa
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.|Department of Applied Physics and Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC), University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yamasaki
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Neutron Science and Technology, Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS), Tokai, Ibaraki 319-1106, Japan.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Ohishi
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Neutron Science and Technology, Comprehensive Research Organization for Science and Society (CROSS), Tokai, Ibaraki 319-1106, Japan.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Taguchi
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.|Department of Advanced Materials Science, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa 277-8561, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Arima
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.|Department of Applied Physics and Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC), University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tokura
authors.affiliation: RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako 351-0198, Japan.|Department of Applied Physics and Quantum-Phase Electronics Center (QPEC), University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Iwasa