Current-controlled propagation of spin waves in antiparallel, coupled domains

Chuanpu Liu; Shizhe Wu; Jianyu Zhang; Jilei Chen; Jinjun Ding; Ji Ma; Yuelin Zhang; Yuanwei Sun; Sa Tu; Hanchen Wang; Pengfei Liu; Chexin Li; Yong Jiang; Peng Gao; Dapeng Yu; Jiang Xiao; Rembert Duine; Mingzhong Wu; Ce-Wen Nan; Jinxing Zhang; Haiming Yu

doi:10.1038/s41565-019-0429-7

Current-controlled propagation of spin waves in antiparallel, coupled domains

Nat Nanotechnol. 2019 Jul;14(7):691-697. doi: 10.1038/s41565-019-0429-7. Epub 2019 Apr 22.

Authors

Chuanpu Liu¹, Shizhe Wu², Jianyu Zhang¹, Jilei Chen¹, Jinjun Ding³, Ji Ma⁴, Yuelin Zhang², Yuanwei Sun⁵, Sa Tu¹, Hanchen Wang¹, Pengfei Liu⁶, Chexin Li⁶, Yong Jiang⁶, Peng Gao⁵, Dapeng Yu^{5

7}, Jiang Xiao^{8

9}, Rembert Duine^{10

11}, Mingzhong Wu³, Ce-Wen Nan⁴, Jinxing Zhang¹², Haiming Yu¹³

Affiliations

¹ Fert Beijing Institute, BDBC, School of Microelectronics, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
² Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.
³ Department of Physics, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
⁴ State Key Lab of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and Electron Microscopy Laboratory, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China.
⁶ Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Materials Genome Engineering, School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China.
⁷ Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
⁸ Department of Physics and State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
⁹ Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing, China.
¹⁰ Institute for Theoretical Physics, Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
¹¹ Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
¹² Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China. jxzhang@bnu.edu.cn.
¹³ Fert Beijing Institute, BDBC, School of Microelectronics, Beihang University, Beijing, China. haiming.yu@buaa.edu.cn.

PMID: 31011219
DOI: 10.1038/s41565-019-0429-7

Abstract

Spin waves may constitute key components of low-power spintronic devices. Antiferromagnetic-type spin waves are innately high-speed, stable and dual-polarized. So far, it has remained challenging to excite and manipulate antiferromagnetic-type propagating spin waves. Here, we investigate spin waves in periodic 100-nm-wide stripe domains with alternating upward and downward magnetization in La_0.67Sr_0.33MnO₃ thin films. In addition to ordinary low-frequency modes, a high-frequency mode around 10 GHz is observed and propagates along the stripe domains with a spin-wave dispersion different from the low-frequency mode. Based on a theoretical model that considers two oppositely oriented coupled domains, this high-frequency mode is accounted for as an effective antiferromagnetic spin-wave mode. The spin waves exhibit group velocities of 2.6 km s^-1 and propagate even at zero magnetic bias field. An electric current pulse with a density of only 10⁵ A cm^-2 can controllably modify the orientation of the stripe domains, which opens up perspectives for reconfigurable magnonic devices.