Huge congratulations to Dr Slastikov on this paper "A micromagnetic theory of skyrmion lifetime in ultrathin ferromagnetic films" being accepted for PNAS publication.
Skyrmions are topologically protected particle-like metastable states arising in field theories of different branches of physics, from particle physics to condensed matter. Our work brings about an advance in understanding thermal stability of magnetic skyrmions by exploiting the fundamental properties of the exchange energy and interpreting skyrmion collapse events as capture by an absorber at microscale. This yields the skyrmion collapse rate as a function of all material parameters. The methodology developed by us has a wide applicability to other physical systems in which topological defects disappear through singularity formation at the continuum level.