Squirming motion of baby skyrmions in nematic fluids

Skyrmions are topologically protected continuous field configurations that cannot be smoothly transformed to a uniform state. They behave like particles and give origins to the field of skyrmionics that promises racetrack memory and other technological applications. Unraveling the non-equilibrium be...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2017-09, Vol.8 (1), p.673-13, Article 673
Main Authors: Ackerman, Paul J., Boyle, Timothy, Smalyukh, Ivan I.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/923/919
639/301/923/966
639/766/119/1002
Boundary conditions
Chirality
Computational fluid dynamics
Computer memory
Continuity (mathematics)
Crystals
Electric fields
Elementary particles
Energy
Equilibrium
Humanities and Social Sciences
Hypothetical particles
Liquid crystals
Mathematical models
Microscopy
multidisciplinary
Particle theory
Phase transitions
Science
Science & Technology - Other Topics
Science (multidisciplinary)
Solitary waves
Topology
Two dimensional models
Viscoelasticity
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Summary:Skyrmions are topologically protected continuous field configurations that cannot be smoothly transformed to a uniform state. They behave like particles and give origins to the field of skyrmionics that promises racetrack memory and other technological applications. Unraveling the non-equilibrium behavior of such topological solitons is a challenge. We realize skyrmions in a chiral liquid crystal and, using numerical modeling and polarized video microscopy, demonstrate electrically driven squirming motion. We reveal the intricate details of non-equilibrium topology-preserving textural changes driving this behavior. Direction of the skyrmion’s motion is robustly controlled in a plane orthogonal to the applied field and can be reversed by varying frequency. Our findings may spur a paradigm of soliton dynamics in soft matter, with a rich interplay between topology, chirality, and orientational viscoelasticity. A skyrmion is a topological object originally introduced to model elementary particles and a baby skyrmion is its two-dimensional counterpart which can be realized as a defect in liquid crystals. Here the authors show that an electric field can drive uniform motion of baby skyrmions in liquid crystals.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-017-00659-5