Abstract
Antiferromagnetic spin waves have been predicted to offer substantial functionalities for magnonic applications due to the existence of two distinct polarizations, the right-handed and left-handed modes, as well as their ultrafast dynamics. However, experimental investigations have been hampered by the field-immunity of antiferromagnets. Ferrimagnets have been shown to be an alternative platform to study antiferromagnetic spin dynamics. Here we investigate thermally excited spin waves in ferrimagnets across the magnetization compensation and angular momentum compensation temperatures using Brillouin light scattering. Our results show that right-handed and left-handed modes intersect at the angular momentum compensation temperature where pure antiferromagnetic spin waves are expected. A field-induced shift of the mode-crossing point from the angular momentum compensation temperature and the gyromagnetic reversal reveal hitherto unrecognized properties of ferrimagnetic dynamics. We also provide a theoretical understanding of our experimental results. Our work demonstrates important aspects of the physics of ferrimagnetic spin waves and opens up the attractive possibility of ferrimagnet-based magnonic devices.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.
Change history
02 September 2020
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
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Acknowledgements
We thank B. Kim at the KAIST Analysis Center for Research Advancement (KARA) for his support with the high-temperature Hall measurement and T. Eom and A. Lee at the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) for their support on the magnetic properties measurement system measurement. This work was supported by the Future Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (nos 2015M3D1A1070467, 2019M3F3A1A02072476 and 2020R1A2C4001789) and a National Research Council of Science & Technology (NST) grant (no. CAP-16-01-KIST) from the Korean government (MSIP). K.-J.K. was supported by the KAIST-funded Global Singularity Research Program for 2020. K.-J.L. acknowledges support from the Samsung Research Funding Center of Samsung Electronics under project no. SRFCMA1702-02. S.K.K. was supported by a Young Investigator Grant (YIG) from the Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association (KSEA) and Research Council Grant URC-19-090 of the University of Missouri.
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C.K., K.-J.K. and C.H. planned the study. C.K. performed the BLS experiment. S.L. grew and optimized the Gd100–xCox samples. S.L., H.-G.K, J.-H.P., J.P., J.Y. and B.-G.P. performed the film characterization. C.K., K.-W.M., S.K.K., K.–J.K. and C.H. analysed the results. K.-J.L. and S.K.K. provided the spin-wave dispersion theory. C.K., S.K.K., K.-J.K. and C.H. wrote the paper. All authors were involved in the discussion of the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Kim, C., Lee, S., Kim, HG. et al. Distinct handedness of spin wave across the compensation temperatures of ferrimagnets. Nat. Mater. 19, 980–985 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0722-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0722-8
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