skyrmions and spintronics

http://phys.org/news/2014-06-advanced-source-skyrmions.html

I don't pretend to really understand the physics of this as explained by the link but apparently these subatomic quasiparticles called skyrmions, which are also magnetic vortices, have great potential use in future spintronics because they can be moved through material over macroscopic distances with only a tiny electrical current.

Originally posted by humy
http://phys.org/news/2014-06-advanced-source-skyrmions.html

I don't pretend to really understand the physics of this as explained by the link but apparently these subatomic quasiparticles called skyrmions, which are also magnetic vortices, have great potential use in future spintronics because they can be moved through material over macroscopic distances with only a tiny electrical current.

Yeah, Wikipedia's almost completely incomprehensible on this. They were introduced by THR Skyrme as a way of coping with baryons in something called the non-linear sigma model. After digging around on Archiv.org I found a review of recent mathematical developments. This is a pedagogical introduction for nuclear and particle physicists. For those that can cope with something highly technical, but it's still easier to understand than the Wikipedia page:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9812148.pdf