Eur. Phys. J. B (2016) 89: 262
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2016-70467-9

Regular Article

Skyrmion dynamics in a chiral magnet driven by periodically varying spin currents^*

Department of Physics, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, P.R. China

^a e-mail: rzhu@scut.edu.cn

Received: 5 August 2016
Received in final form: 9 October 2016
Published online: 5 December 2016

Abstract

In this work, we investigated the spin dynamics in a slab of chiral magnets induced by an alternating (ac) spin current. Periodic trajectories of the skyrmion in real space are discovered under the ac current as a result of the Magnus and viscous forces, which originate from the Gilbert damping, the spin transfer torque, and the β-nonadiabatic torque effects. The results are obtained by numerically solving the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation and can be explained by the Thiele equation characterizing the skyrmion core motion.