Pathways to bubble and skyrmion lattice formation in Fe/Gd multilayers

The creation and control of magnetic spin textures is of great interest in fundamental research and future device-oriented applications. Fe/Gd multilayers host a rich variety of magnetic textures including topologically trivial type-2 bubbles and topologically protected chiral type-1 bubbles, also known as dipolar-stabilized skyrmions. Using time-resolved Kerr spectroscopy, we highlight how various control strategies, including temperature, out-of-plane magnetic fields and femtosecond light excitation, can be used to create such textures via different pathways. We find that varying the magnetic field for constant temperature leads to a different (H, T) phase diagram of magnetic textures than moving along a temperature trajectory for constant magnetic field. Micromagnetic simulations corroborate this finding and allow us to visualize the different paths taken. Furthermore, we show that the creation of bubbles and skyrmions in this material via impulsive light excitation is not solely governed by temperature-driven processes, since bubbles and skyrmions can be stabilized in parts of the (H, T) phase diagram, where neither the constant temperature nor the constant magnetic field trajectory predict their existence. Using this phase diagram, we reason why bubble and skyrmion creation in this particular system is only possible from the stripe domain state. Our observations provide a versatile toolkit for tailoring the creation of magnetic spin textures in Fe/Gd multilayers.