Topological Charge Control of Skyrmion Structure in Frustrated Magnets by Circularly Polarized Light

The classical Heisenberg model with the J1-J2-J3 interaction forms a skyrmion structure, which is characterized by quantized topological charge. Due to the symmetric interaction, the generated topological charges are randomly distributed in the system, and not controllable intrinsically. Here we show theoretically that manipulation of topological charge can be carried out by applying circularly polarized light, as a result of the mechanism of the topological inverse Faraday effect arising from the coupling of light helicity and topological charge. The effect is expected to be useful for control of the topological charge bit in a skyrmion-based racetrack memory.