Figure 1

(a) Skyrmion energy variation along the collapse path at a zero magnetic field for the globally minimized path (blue) as well as the two paths found in Ref. [2]. (b) Representation on the unit sphere of the skyrmion one image after the saddle point seen from the skyrmion core hemisphere. (c) Variation of the energy components along the path. The vertical dotted line indicates the saddle-point position. (d) Variation of the collapse energy versus the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) value. The values from Ref. [2] are given in gray.