No Arabic abstract
The controllable magnetic skyrmion motion represents a highly concerned issue in preparing advanced skyrmion-based spintronic devices. Specifically, magnon-driven skyrmion motion can be easily accessible in both metallic and insulating magnets, and thus is highly preferred over electric current control further for the ultra-low energy consumption. In this work, we investigate extensively the dynamics of skyrmion motion driven by magnon in an antiferromagnet using the collective coordinate theory, focusing on the effect of magnon polarization. It is revealed that the skyrmion Hall motion driven by circularly polarized magnon becomes inevitable generally, consistent with earlier report. Furthermore, the elastic scattering theory and numerical results unveil the strong inter-dependence between the linearly polarized magnon and skyrmion motion, suggesting the complicated dependence of the skyrmion motion on the polarization nature of driving magnon. On the reversal, the scattering from the moving skyrmion may lead to decomposition of the linearly polarized magnon into two elliptically polarized magnon bands. Consequently, a net transverse force acting on skyrmion is generated owing to the broken mirror symmetry, which in turn drives a skyrmion Hall motion. The Hall motion can be completely suppressed only in some specific condition where the mirror symmetry is preserved. The present work unveils non-trivial skyrmion-magnon scattering behavior in antiferromagnets, advancing the antiferromagnetic spintronics and benefiting to high-performance devices.
Magnon spin Nernst effect was recently proposed as an intrinsic effect in antiferromagnets, where spin diffusion and boundary spin transmission have been ignored. However, diffusion processes are essential to convert a bulk spin current into boundary spin accumulation, which determines the spin injection rate into detectors through imperfect transmission. We formulate a diffusive theory of the magnon spin Nernst effect with boundary conditions reflecting real device geometry. Thanks to the diffusion effect, the output signals in both electronic and optical detection grow rapidly with an increasing system size in the transverse dimension, which eventually saturate. Counterintuitively, the measurable signals are even functions of magnetic field, yielding optical detection more reliable than electronic detection.
We construct Holstein-Primakoff Hamiltonian for magnons in arbitrary slowly varying spin background, for a microscopic spin Hamiltonian consisting of ferromagnetic spin exchange,Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya exchange, and the Zeeman term. The Gross-Pitaevskii-type equation for magnon dynamics contains several background gauge fields pertaining to local spin chirality, inhomogeneous potential, and anomalous scattering that violates the boson number conservation. Non-trivial corrections to previous formulas derived in the literature are given. Subsequent mapping to hydrodynamic fields yields the continuity equation and the Euler equation of the magnon fluid dynamics. Magnon wave scattering off a localized Skyrmion is examined numerically based on our Gross-Pitaevskii formulation. Dependence of the effective flux experienced by the impinging magnon on the Skyrmion radius is pointed out, and compared with analysis of the same problem using the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation.
The magnon-magnon coupling in synthetic antiferromagnets advances it as hybrid magnonic systems to explore the quantum information technologies. To induce the magnon-magnon coupling, the parity symmetry between two magnetization needs to be broken. Here we experimentally demonstrate a convenient method to break the parity symmetry by the asymmetric thickness of two magnetic layers and thus introduce a magnon-magnon coupling in Ir-based synthetic antiferromagnets CoFeB(10 nm)/Ir(tIr=0.6 nm, 1.2 nm)/CoFeB(13 nm). Remarkably, we find that the weakly uniaxial anisotropy field (~ 20 Oe) makes the magnon-magnon coupling anisotropic. The coupling strength presented by a characteristic anticrossing gap varies in the range between 0.54 GHz and 0.90 GHz for tIr =0.6 nm, and between nearly zero to 1.4 GHz for tIr = 1.2 nm, respectively. Our results demonstrate a feasible way to induce the magnon-magnon coupling by an asymmetric structure and tune the coupling strength by varying the direction of in-plane magnetic field. The magnon-magnon coupling in this highly tunable material system could open exciting perspectives for exploring quantum-mechanical coupling phenomena.
Synthetic antiferromagnet, comprised of two ferromagnetic layers separated by a non-magnetic layer, possesses two uniform precession resonance modes: in-phase acoustic mode and out-of-phase optic mode. In this work, we theoretically and numerically demonstrated the strong coupling between acoustic and optic magnon modes. The strong coupling is attributed to the symmetry breaking of the system, which can be realized by tilting the bias field or constructing an asymmetrical synthetic antiferromagnet. It is found that the coupling strength can be highly adjusted by tuning the tilting angle of bias field, the magnitude of antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling, and the thicknesses of ferromagnetic layers. Furthermore, the coupling between acoustic and optic magnon modes can even reach the ultrastrong coupling regime. Our findings show high promise for investigating quantum phenomenon with a magnonic platform.
We develop a linear-response transport theory of diffusive spin and heat transport by magnons in magnetic insulators with metallic contacts. The magnons are described by a position dependent temperature and chemical potential that are governed by diffusion equations with characteristic relaxation lengths. Proceeding from a linearized Boltzmann equation, we derive expressions for length scales and transport coefficients. For yttrium iron garnet (YIG) at room temperature we find that long-range transport is dominated by the magnon chemical potential. We compare the models results with recent experiments on YIG with Pt contacts [L.J. Cornelissen, et al., Nat. Phys. 11, 1022 (2015)] and extract a magnon spin conductivity of $sigma_{m}=5times10^{5}$ S/m. Our results for the spin Seebeck coefficient in YIG agree with published experiments. We conclude that the magnon chemical potential is an essential ingredient for energy and spin transport in magnetic insulators.