How does a two-dimensional skyrmion lattice melt?
In plain words
A sheet of skyrmions can melt like a 2D crystal, possibly through an intermediate hexatic phase that keeps orientation order but loses positional order. Whether this two-step melting is generic, and how pinning changes it, is open.
Precise statement
For a 2D skyrmion lattice in a thin chiral magnet, determine whether melting follows the two-step KTHNY scenario (solid to hexatic to liquid via Kosterlitz-Thouless transitions, with $\eta_6=1/4$ at the hexatic-liquid transition) or a first-order transition, and how quenched pinning changes the sequence. An answer is the measured or simulated phase diagram with correlation-function exponents.
What would settle it
Real-space imaging of skyrmion positions in clean films across temperature, analyzed for translational and orientational correlations, with simulations using the measured pinning.
Status in the literature
Unverified note: it names recent work and was partly written without a live literature search; it awaits a check by an editor.
Huang et al. (Nature Nanotechnology 2020) observed a hexatic skyrmion phase in thin $\mathrm{Cu_2OSeO_3}$.
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