In magnetism, skyrmions correspond to classical three-dimensional spin textures characterized by a topological invariant that keeps track of the winding of the magnetization in real space, a property that cannot be easily generalized to the quantum case since the orientation of a quantum spin is, in general, ill defined. Moreover, as we show, the quantum skyrmion state cannot be directly observed in modern experiments that probe the local magnetization of the system. However, we show that this novel quantum state can still be identified and fully characterized by a special local three-spin correlation function defined on neighboring lattice sites—the scalar chirality—which reduces to the classical topological invariant for large systems and which is shown to be nearly constant in the quantum skyrmion phase.

Close

PrevNext

View figure in article

• Quantum criticality
• Skyrmions
• Spin state transition
• Symmetry protected topological states
• Topological materials
• Chiral magnets
• Noncollinear magnets
• Strongly correlated systems
• Exact diagonalization
• Heisenberg model
• Magnetization measurements
• Spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy