Magnetically-Controlled Dynamics of Skyrmions in Chiral Ferromagnetic Liquid Crystals

Topological solitons, such as skyrmions, arise in field theories ranging from high energy physics to condensed matter and cosmology. Skyrmions can also be realized in the magnetization field of colloids with long-range ferromagnetic ordering, where the ability of optical imaging in the bulk reveals their structure and topology in detail. In this work, using a combination of experiments and numerical modeling, we demonstrate the magnetic control of equilibrium configurations and rich dynamics of skyrmions, revealing how ferromagnetic liquid crystal colloids can serve as a soft matter model system for directly visualizing effects previously predicted to occur in solid-state ferromagnets.