  Magnetic skyrmions in chiral magnets are nanoscale, topologically-protected
magnetization swirls that are promising candidates for spintronics memory
carriers. Therefore, observing and manipulating the skyrmion state on the
surface level of the materials are of great importance for future applications.
Here, we report a controlled way of creating a multidomain skyrmion state near
the surface of a Cu$_{2}$OSeO$_{3}$ single crystal, observed by soft resonant
elastic x-ray scattering. This technique is an ideal tool to probe the magnetic
order at the $L_{3}$ edge of $3d$ metal compounds giving a depth sensitivity of
${\sim}50$ nm. The single-domain sixfold-symmetric skyrmion lattice can be
broken up into domains overcoming the propagation directions imposed by the
cubic anisotropy by applying the magnetic field in directions deviating from
the major cubic axes. Our findings open the door to a new way to manipulate and
engineer the skyrmion state locally on the surface, or on the level of
individual skyrmions, which will enable applications in the future.
