No Arabic abstract
We present measurements of the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) by a technique that combines alternating currents (AC) and direct currents (DC). The method is applied to a ferrimagnetic insulator/heavy metal bilayer, Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$(YIG)/Pt. Typically, SSE measurements use an AC current to produce an alternating temperature gradient and measure the voltage generated by the inverse spin-Hall effect in the heavy metal at twice the AC frequency. Here we show that when Joule heating is associated with AC and DC bias currents, the SSE response occurs at the frequency of the AC current drive and can be larger than the second harmonic SSE response. We compare the first and second harmonic responses and show that they are consistent with the SSE. The field dependence of the voltage response is used to characterize the damping-like and field-like torques. This method can be used to explore nonlinear thermoelectric effects and spin dynamics induced by temperature gradients.
The rising field of spin caloritronics focuses on the interactions between spin and heat currents in a magnetic material; the observation of the spin Seebeck effect opened the route to this branch of research. This paper reports the results of a round robin test performed by five partners on a single device highlighting the reproducibility problems related to the measurements of the spin Seebeck coefficient, the quantity that describes the strength of the spin Seebeck effect. This work stimulated the search for more reproducible measurement methods through the analysis of the systematic effects.
We report time-resolved magneto-optic Kerr effect measurements of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect driven by an interfacial temperature difference between itinerant electrons and magnons. The measured time-evolution of spin accumulation induced by laser-excitation indicates transfer of angular momentum across Au/Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ and Cu/Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ interfaces on a picosecond time-scale. The product of spin-mixing conductance and interfacial spin Seebeck coefficient determined is of the order of $10^8$ A m$^{-2}$ K$^{-1}$.
A new measurement technique for the spin Seebeck effect is presented, wherein the normal metal layer used for its detection is exploited simultaneously as a resistive heater and thermometer. We show how the various contributions to the measured total signal can be disentangled, allowing to extract the voltage signal solely caused by the spin Seebeck effect. To this end we performed measurements as a function of the external magnetic field strength and its orientation. We find that the effect scales linearly with the induced rise in temperature, as expected for the spin Seebeck effect.
We theoretically propose a nonreciprocal spin Seebeck effect, i.e., nonreciprocal spin transport generated by a temperature gradient, in antiferromagnetic insulators with broken inversion symmetry. We find that nonreciprocity in antiferromagnets has rich properties not expected in ferromagnets. In particular, we show that polar antiferromagnets, in which the crystal lacks the spatial inversion symmetry, exhibit perfect nonreciprocity --- one-way spin current flow irrespective of the direction of the temperature gradient. We also show that nonpolar centrosymmetric crystals can exhibit nonreciprocity when a magnetic order breaks the inversion symmetry, and in this case, the direction of the nonreciprocal flow can be controlled by reversing the magnetic domain. As their representatives, we calculate the nonreciprocal spin Seebeck voltages for the polar antiferromagnet $alpha$-Cu$_2$V$_2$O$_7$ and the honeycomb antiferromagnet MnPS$_3$, while varying temperature and magnetic field.
Using a simplified microscopic model of coupled spin and lattice excitations in a ferromagnetic insulator we evaluate the magnetic-field dependence of the spin Seebeck effect at low temperatures. The model includes Heisenberg exchange coupling, a harmonic lattice potential, and a pseudo-dipolar exchange interaction. Our approach goes beyond previous work [Phys. Rev. B 98, 134421 (2018)] in that it does not rely on the a priori assumption of a fast equilibration of the magnon and phonon distributions. Our theory shows that singular features in the magnetic-field dependence of the spin Seebeck effect at low temperatures observed by Kikkawa et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 207203 (2016)] are independent of the relative strength of magnon-impurity and phonon-impurity scattering.