Quantum Skyrmion Lattices in Heisenberg Ferromagnets

Skyrmions are topological magnetic textures which can arise in non-centrosymmetric ferromagnetic materials. In most systems experimentally investigated to date, skyrmions emerge as classical objects. However, the discovery of skyrmions with nanometer length scales has sparked interest in their quantum properties. Quantum corrections to the classical magnetic textures have already been considered in the semiclassical regime. Here, we go beyond this limit by investigating quantum skyrmions in the deep quantum regime. We use density matrix renormalization group techniques to study two-dimensional spin-1/2 Heisenberg ferromagnets with Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and discover a broad region in the zero temperature phase diagram which hosts quantum skyrmion lattice ground states. We argue that this novel quantum skyrmion phase can be detected experimentally in the magnetization profile via local magnetic polarization measurements as well as in the spin structure factor measurable via neutron scattering experiments. Finally, we explore the resulting quantum skyrmion state, analyze its real space polarization profile and show that it is a non-classical state featuring entanglement between quasiparticle and environment mainly localized near the boundary spins of the skyrmion.