Paper detail

Topological phase diagrams of the frustrated Ising ferromagnet

The emergence of complex modulated structures in the magnetization pattern of thin films is a well-established experimental phenomenology caused by the frustrating effects of competing interactions. Using a coarse-grained version of the Ising ferromagnet with dipolar interactions, we develop a method that uses the information from the microscopic Hamiltonian to predict the specific topological phases present in the temperature-external magnetic field phase diagram. This is done by the combination of mean-field variational calculations and the renormalization group equations from the classical theory of two-dimensional melting. In this framework, we are able to distinguish when the orientational and translational symmetries are broken, discriminating between the ordered and disordered states of the system for all temperatures and fields. We observe that the reentrance developed by the $H$-$T$ phase diagrams in the regime of weak dipolar interactions is directly related with the appearance of anomalous topological transitions. These results motivate the realization of new experiments on magnetic thin films in order to explore the topological properties of the magnetic textures, allowing to identify new exotic phases in these materials.