Researchers from the EPFL managed to produce controllable and stable skyrmions using laser pulses. The scientists could write and erase skyrmions in less than a few hundred nanoseconds to a few microseconds.
To create the skyrmions, the researchers used iron-germanium alloy, which can offer skyrmions at about 0 degrees Celsius, very closet o room temperature. The ultra-short laser pulses create an ultra-fast temperature jump, and the super-cooling effect at the end of the jump restricts the place in which skyrmions exist - to places in which they do not exist normally.
Once the skyrmions were established, by adjusting the parameters in proximity to the transition between having the skyrmions and not having them anymore, laser pulses can be used to erase them via local heating-induced demagnetization.