Pattern formation in skyrmionic materials with anisotropic environments

Abstract: Magnetic skyrmions have attracted broad attention during recent years because they are regarded as promising candidates as bits of information in novel data storage devices. A broad range of theoretical and experimental investigations have been conducted with the consideration of rotational symmetric skyrmions in isotropic environments. However, one naturally observes a huge variety of anisotropic behavior in many experimentally relevant materials. In the present work, we investigate the influence of anisotropic environments onto the formation and behavior of the non-collinear spin states of skyrmionic materials by means of Monte-Carlo calculations. We find skyrmionic textures which are far from having a rotational symmetric shape. Furthermore, we show the possibility to employ periodic modulations of the environment to create skyrmionic tracks.