Impact of higher-order exchange on the lifetime of skyrmions and antiskyrmions

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npj Computational Materials

Reliable control of skyrmion lifetime is essential for realizing spintronic devices, yet the role of higher-order exchange—which can lead to skyrmion stabilization—remains largely unexplored. Here we calculate lifetimes of isolated skyrmions and antiskyrmions at transition-metal interfaces based on an atomistic spin model that includes all fourth-order exchange terms. Within harmonic transition-state theory, we evaluate both energetic and entropic contributions and find substantially enhanced lifetimes when higher-order exchange is included. The four-spin four-site interaction raises the energy barrier and lowers the curvature of the energy landscape at the collapse saddle point, increasing the pre-exponential factor. We show that skyrmions and antiskyrmions can remain thermally stable even without Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI), and that tuning the four-spin term by a small amount modulates the prefactor over orders of magnitude. Our results identify higher-order exchange as a promising route to stabilize topological magnetic textures—in particular in systems lacking DMI—and to engineer their thermally activated decay.