We present results of a numerical analysis of magnon spectra in supercells simulating two-dimensional and bulk random diluted ferromagnets with long-ranged pair exchange interactions. We show that low-energy spectral regions for these strongly disordered systems contain a coherent component leading to interference phenomena manifested by a pronounced sensitivity of the lowest excitation energies to the adopted boundary conditions. The dependence of configuration averages of these excitation energies on the supercell size can be used for an efficient determination of the spin-wave stiffness D. The developed formalism is applied to the ferromagnetic Mn-doped GaAs semiconductor with optional incorporation of phosphorus; the obtained concentration trends of D are found in reasonable agreement with recent experiments. Moreover, a relation of the spin stiffness to the Curie temperature Tc has been studied for Mn-doped GaAs and GaN semiconductors. It is found that the ratio Tc/D exhibits qualitatively the same dependence on Mn concentration in both systems.
Low temperature magnetization of CrI3, CrSiTe3 and CrGeTe3 single crystals were systematically studied. Based on the temperature dependence of extrapolated spontaneous magnetization from magnetic isotherms measured at different temperatures, the spin stiffness constant (D) and spin excitation gap ($Delta$) were extracted according to Blochs law. For spin stiffness, D is estimated to be 27${pm}$6 meV $r{A}^2$, 20${pm}$3 meV $r{A}^2$ and 38${pm}$7 meV $r{A}^2$ for CrI3, CrSiTe3 and CrGeTe3 respectively. Spin excitation gaps determined via Blochs formulation have larger error bars yielding 0.59${pm}$0.34 meV (CrI3), 0.37${pm}$0.22 meV (CrSiTe3) and 0.28${pm}$0.19 meV (CrGeTe3). Among all three studied compounds, larger spin stiffness value leads to higher ferromagnetic transition temperature.
Motivated by recent progress on synthesizing two-dimensional magnetic van der Waals systems, we propose a setup for detecting the topological Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition in spin-transport experiments on such structures. We demonstrate that the spatial correlations of injected spin-currents into a pair of metallic leads can be used to measure the predicted universal jump of $2/pi$ in the ferromagnet spin-stiffness as well as its predicted universal square root dependence on temperature as the transition is approached from below. Our setup provides a simple route to measuring this topological phase transition in two-dimensional magnetic systems, something which up to now has proven elusive. It is hoped that this will encourage experimental efforts to investigate critical phenomena beyond the standard Ginzburg-Landau paradigm in low-dimensional magnetic systems with no local order parameter.
Based on first-principles density functional calculations, a general approach for determining and analyzing the degree of spin polarization (P) in ferromagnets is presented. The approach employs the so-called tetrahedron method to evaluate the Fermi surface integrations of P in both ballistic and diffusive regimes. The validity of the method is examined by comparing the calculated P values for Fe and Ni with the experiment. The method is shown to yield highly accurate results with minimal computational effort. Within our approach, it is also possible to systematically analyze the contributions of various types of electronic states to the spin induced transport. As a case study, the transport properties of the soft-ferromagnet CeMnNi4 are investigated in order to explain the origin of the existing difference between the experimental and theoretical values of P in this intermetallic compound.
Inertia effects in magnetization dynamics are theoretically shown to result in a different type of spin waves, i.e. nutation surface spin waves, which propagate at terahertz frequencies in in-plane magnetized ferromagnetic thin films. Considering the magnetostatic limit, i.e. neglecting exchange coupling, we calculate dispersion relation and group velocity, which we find to be slower than the velocity of conventional (precession) spin waves. In addition, we find that the nutation surface spin waves are backward spin waves. Furthermore, we show that inertia causes a decrease of the frequency of the precession spin waves, namely magnetostatic surface spin waves and backward volume magnetostatic spin waves. The magnitude of the decrease depends on the magnetic properties of the film and its geometry.
We provide compelling evidence to establish that, contrary to ones elementary guess, the tunneling spin polarization (TSP) of amorphous CoFeB is larger than that of highly textured fcc CoFeB. First principles atomic and electronic structure calculations reveal striking agreement between the measured TSP and the predicted s-electron spin polarization. Given the disordered structure of the ternary alloy, not only do these results strongly endorse our communal understanding of tunneling through AlOx, but they also portray the key concepts that demand primary consideration in such complex systems.