ABSTRACT
Antiferromagnetic materials are promising platforms for next-generation spintronics owing to their fast dynamics and high robustness against parasitic magnetic fields. However, nanoscale imaging of the magnetic order in such materials with zero net magnetization remains a major experimental challenge. Here we show that non-collinear antiferromagnetic spin textures can be imaged by probing the magnetic noise they locally produce via thermal populations of magnons. To this end, we perform nanoscale, all-optical relaxometry with a scanning quantum sensor based on a single nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond. Magnetic noise is detected through an increase of the spin relaxation rate of the NV defect, which results in an overall reduction of its photoluminescence signal under continuous laser illumination. As a proof-of-concept, the efficiency of the method is demonstrated by imaging various spin textures in synthetic antiferromagnets, including domain walls, spin spirals and antiferromagnetic skyrmions. This imaging procedure could be extended to a large class of intrinsic antiferromagnets and opens up new opportunities for studying the physics of localized spin wave modes for magnonics.
ABSTRACT
We present an experimental study of spin-torque driven vortex self-oscillations in magnetic nanocontacts. We find that, above a certain threshold in applied currents, the vortex gyration around the nanocontact is modulated by relaxation oscillations, which involve periodic reversals of the vortex core. This modulation leads to the appearance of commensurate but also, more interestingly here, incommensurate states, which are characterized by devil's staircases in the modulation frequency. We use frequency- and time-domain measurements together with advanced time-series analyses to provide experimental evidence of chaos in incommensurate states of vortex oscillations, in agreement with theoretical predictions.
ABSTRACT
The channeling of spin waves with domain walls in ultrathin ferromagnetic films is demonstrated theoretically and through micromagnetics simulations. It is shown that propagating excitations localized to the wall, which appear in the frequency gap of bulk spin wave modes, can be guided in curved geometries and propagate in close proximity to other channels. For Néel-type walls arising from a Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, the channeling is strongly nonreciprocal and group velocities can exceed 1 km/s in the long wavelength limit for certain propagation directions. The channeled modes represent an unusual analogy of whispering gallery waves that are one dimensional and nonreciprocal with this interaction. Moreover, a sufficiently strong Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction can create a degeneracy of channeled and propagating modes at a critical wave vector.
