Spontaneous skyrmion ground states in magnetic metals

March of the skyrmions A long-standing problem in modern physics is the description of particle–wave duality in terms of countable particles in continuous fields. It is known that particle-like states called skyrmions (they were conceived by Tony Skyrme) are a characteristic of nonlinear field models on microscopic to cosmological scales. But to date it has only been established that skyrmions exist as excitations, or when stabilized by external fields or topological defects, where they manifest as Turing patterns, spin textures in quantum Hall magnets, or blue phases in liquid crystals. New theoretical work suggests that skyrmions can also form stable ground states in various types of magnetic metals that should be observable directly with modern magnetic microscopy techniques. And on this new theory, skyrmion ground states should exist generally in a large number of materials.