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. 2017 Sep 26;7:12299. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-12525-x

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Minimum energy paths of skyrmion collapse. Energies of the spin configurations during a skyrmion collapse in (a) hcp-Pd/Fe/Ir(111) at B = 1.5 T and (b) fcc-Pd/Fe/Ir(111) at B = 4.0 T are shown over the reaction coordinate corresponding to the progress of the collapse. The energies are given with respect to the initial state, i.e. the isolated skyrmion. Simulations using both the effective exchange model (denoted by J eff) and taking all exchange constants from the DFT calculation into account (denoted by J DFT) are displayed. Insets show the spin structure of the initial and the saddle point configurations for both simulations.