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Title: How does a two-dimensional skyrmion lattice melt?
Plain: 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: 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.
Settled by: Real-space imaging of skyrmion positions in clean films across temperature, analyzed for translational and orientational correlations, with simulations using the measured pinning.
Kind: well-posed
Answer type: classification
References: (empty)
Literature status: partially-resolved
Status note: Huang et al. (Nature Nanotechnology 2020) observed a hexatic skyrmion phase in thin Cu2OSeO3.
Posed since: (empty)