Observing, Creating and Addressing Topological Spin Textures in a Monolayer XY Magnet

In a series of pioneering works in the early 1970's, John Kosterlitz and David Thouless first connected the concept of topology to the physics of solids. The basis of this framework is the discrete topological unit, an object defined by its resistance to being smoothly deformed into a continuous background, in the way a disk cannot be smoothly…