  Lorentz transmission electron microscopy (LTEM) investigations of modulated
states in a FeGe wedge and detailed calculations demonstrate that chiral twists
arising near the surfaces of noncentrosymmetric ferromagnets (Meynell et al.
Phys. Rev. B, 90, 014406 (2014)) provide a stabilization mechanism for skyrmion
lattices and helicoids in cubic helimagnet nanolayers. The calculated magnetic
phase diagram for free standing cubic helimagnet nanolayers shows that
magnetization processes in these compounds fundamentally differ from those in
bulk cubic helimagnets and are characterized by the first-order transitions
between modulated phases and the formation of specific multidomain states. The
paper reports LTEM observations of multidomain patterns in FeGe free-standing
nanolayers.
