| dc.description.abstract | Skyrmions are magnetic textures, that behave like particles.
They exist as excitations within two-dimensional magnetic insulators and are promising candidates for future data storage.
There has been a strong rise in interest in skyrmions in recent years, which is encouraged by several experimental observations of skyrmions in various magnetic thin-films.
In this thesis we study the quantum mechanical propagation of skyrmions in thin film antiferromagnets, using the finite temperature path integral formalism for spins.
Using field theoretical tools like the Faddeev-Popov technique, we treat the coordinate of a skyrmion as a dynamical variable and derive an effective action for the skyrmion position.
We find that the spin wave fluctuations around a skyrmion give rise to damping of the skyrmion's motion and also gives rise to effective mass contributions. | |
