Creation, annihilation and transport of nonmagnetic antiskyrmions within Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model

Atomistic model calculations recently revealed that the polarization pattern at the cross-section through nanoscale ferroelectric nanodomains in rhombohedral barium titanate shows a clear antiskyrmion attributes such as the net invariant topological charge of minus two. The present work confirms that these topological defects also exist as local minima in the discretized Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model, which is widely used in the phase-field modeling studies. We explore by phase-field simulations how an electric field can be used to create or move antiskyrmions within a monodomain ferroelectric matrix. The process of the field-induced antiskyrmion annihilation reveals the existence of a discrete ladder of intermediate antiskyrmion states with distinct radii but common symmetry, topology and geometrical properties.