Publication date: 14 August 2026
Source: Key Engineering Materials Vol. 1062
Author(s): Clémence Bachmann, Daniele Mari, Sylvain Brechet
We investigate the dynamics of full skyrmions in chiral liquid crystals using an Eulerian formalism originally developed for topological defects in crystals. We show how this approach can be extended to liquid crystals and related to the Frank–Oseen description. Within this framework, skyrmions are characterised by their associated distortion charges, and their dynamics are derived from a generalised Peach–Koehler force combined with Newton’s second law. We demonstrate that the resulting equations of motion recover the behaviour reported in previous studies, in particular those of Alvim et al., while providing a purely analytical perspective. This approach offers a unified and conceptually transparent description of skyrmion dynamics and suggests possible extensions to interacting skyrmions and other topological defects.
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