GPU-Accelerated Atomistic Energy Barrier Calculations of Skyrmion Annihilations

We present GPU-accelerated simulations to calculate the annihilation energy of magnetic skyrmions in an atomistic spin model considering dipole-dipole, exchange, uniaxial-anisotropy, and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions using the simplified string method. The skyrmion annihilation energy is directly related to its thermal stability, and it is a key measure for the applicability of magnetic skyrmions to storage and logic devices. We investigate annihilations mediated by Bloch points as well as annihilations via boundaries for various interaction energies. Both processes show similar behavior with boundary annihilations resulting in smaller energy barriers than Bloch point annihilations.