Magnetic Droplet: When a solitary wave travels atop the surface of a fluid, its shape generally changes with time, with some of its components traveling at velocities slightly different than others. In nonlinear media, this spreading effect may be countered by a slimming effect stemming from the non-linearity, which generates an object with perfectly preserved shape, called a soliton. Solitons have been observed in fluids, granular media, and other systems. Mohseni et al. (p. 1295 ) detected a dissipative soliton (one that also balances gain and dissipation) in a magnetic system, in the form of a magnetic droplet consisting of a core of spins pointing opposite to the external magnetic field. The droplet exhibited peculiar dynamics and could be controlled by electric current.

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically non-trivial spin textures that manifest themselves as quasiparticles in ferromagnetic thin films or noncentrosymmetric bulk materials. So far attention has focused on skyrmions stabilized either by the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI) or by dipolar interaction, where in the latter case the excitations are known as bubble skyrmions. Here we demonstrate the existence of a dynamically stabilized skyrmion, which exists even when dipolar interactions and DMI are absent. We establish how such dynamic skyrmions can be nucleated, sustained and manipulated in an effectively lossless medium under a nanocontact. As quasiparticles, they can be transported between two nanocontacts in a nanowire, even in complete absence of DMI. Conversely, in the presence of DMI, we observe that the dynamical skyrmion experiences strong breathing. All of this points towards a wide range of skyrmion manipulation, which can be studied in a much wider class of materials than considered so far.

To develop a full understanding of interactions in nanomagnet arrays is a persistent challenge, critically impacting their technological acceptance. This paper reports the experimental, numerical and analytical investigation of interactions in arrays of Co nanoellipses using the first-order reversal curve (FORC) technique. A mean-field analysis has revealed the physical mechanisms giving rise to all of the observed features: a shift of the non-interacting FORC-ridge at the low-HC end off the local coercivity HC axis; a stretch of the FORC-ridge at the high-HC end without shifting it off the HC axis; and a formation of a tilted edge connected to the ridge at the low-HC end. Changing from flat to Gaussian coercivity distribution produces a negative feature, bends the ridge, and broadens the edge. Finally, nearest neighbor interactions segment the FORC-ridge. These results demonstrate that the FORC approach provides a comprehensive framework to qualitatively and quantitatively decode interactions in nanomagnet arrays.

Sub-$100\mathrm{nm}$ nanomagnets not only are technologically important, but also exhibit complex magnetization reversal behaviors as their dimensions are comparable to typical magnetic domain wall widths. Here we capture magnetic “fingerprints” of ${10}^9$ Fe nanodots as they undergo a single domain to vortex state transition, using a first-order reversal curve (FORC) method. As the nanodot size increases from $52\mathrm{nm}\text{to}67\mathrm{nm}$, the FORC diagrams reveal striking differences, despite only subtle changes in their major hysteresis loops. The $52\mathrm{nm}$ nanodots exhibit single domain behavior and the coercivity distribution extracted from the FORC distribution agrees well with a calculation based on the measured nanodot size distribution. The 58 and $67\mathrm{nm}$ nanodots exhibit vortex states, where the nucleation and annihilation of the vortices are manifested as butterflylike features in the FORC distribution and confirmed by micromagnetic simulations. Furthermore, the FORC method gives quantitative measures of the magnetic phase fractions, and vortex nucleation and annihilation fields.

It has been argued that if multiple spin wave modes are competing for the same centrally located energy source, as in a nanocontact spin torque oscillator, that only one mode should survive in the steady state. Here, the experimental conditions necessary for mode coexistence are explored. Mode coexistence is facilitated by the local field asymmetries induced by the spatially inhomogeneous Oersted field, which leads to a physical separation of the modes, and is further promoted by spin wave localization at reduced applied field angles. Finally, both simulation and experiment reveal a low frequency signal consistent with the intermodulation of two coexistent modes.