Thermally assisted skyrmion drag in a nonuniform electric field

Magnetic skyrmions are topologically protected excitations of the magnetization vector field with promising applications in spintronics and spin-caloritronics, particularly due to their high mobility. Skyrmions can be steered by a spin-polarized charge current or by exposure to a magnonic spin current. Here, we propose a further method for driving skyrmions by applying an inhomogeneous electric field and a homogeneous thermal bias. We show that the inhomogeneous electric torque leads to an efficient skyrmionic drag which can be thermally assisted as to enhance the skyrmion velocity. The calculations and analysis are limited to insulating samples; for conducting materials the influence of the inhomogeneous electric field on the charge carriers needs to be taken also into account.