Collective depinning of dipolar skyrmion chains: thermal and athermal rounding of an elastic polymer in a quenched landscape

Abstract

The dynamics of interacting dipole skyrmion chains in a weak pinning landscape is studied through numerical solutions of the stochastic Thiele equation. Chains of different lengths with periodic boundary conditions are driven across quenched attractive pinning sites under different magnetic fields. A clear threshold spin current is identified as the critical depinning force. Three main results emerge: (i) for chains of 50 skyrmions or more, the depinning threshold is independent of chain length and remains close to one third of that of an isolated skyrmion. (ii) The transition rounding is only partly thermal: the width changes from w = 0.334 +/- 0.004 decades at T = 0 to 0.633 +/- 0.002 at 300 K, while the intrinsic Larkin correlation length remains about 2.6 bonds below kBT ~ V0/25. (iii) The width is nearly unchanged up to kBT ~ 0.14 V0, but increases almost fourfold by kBT ~ 0.23 V0, mainly through broadening of the creep regime. It is independent of chain length, ruling out finite-size rounding. Increasing the field from 30 to 40 mT changes the transition shape, widening its core by 26% while shortening the creep tails. For chains of about 200 skyrmions, depinning proceeds through a sequence of internal deformations - growth of the Larkin length and roughness, transient bond stretching, and subsequent recovery of mobility and Hall angle. These collective effects are relevant for skyrmion-based devices in which chains, rather than isolated textures, act as information carriers.