Control of the Bose-Einstein Condensation of Magnons by the Spin Hall Effect.

Previously, it has been shown that rapid cooling of yttrium-iron-garnet-platinum nanostructures, preheated by an electric current sent through the Pt layer, leads to overpopulation of a magnon gas and to subsequent formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of magnons. The spin Hall effect (SHE), which creates a spin-polarized current in the Pt layer, can inject or annihilate magnons depending on the electric current and applied field orientations. Here we demonstrate that the injection or annihilation of magnons via the SHE can prevent or promote the formation of a rapid cooling-induced magnon BEC. Depending on the current polarity, a change in the BEC threshold of -8% and +6% was detected. These findings demonstrate a new method to control macroscopic quantum states, paving the way for their application in spintronic devices.

Bose-Einstein condensation of quasiparticles by rapid cooling.

The fundamental phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation has been observed in different systems of real particles and quasiparticles. The condensation of real particles is achieved through a major reduction in temperature, while for quasiparticles, a mechanism of external injection of bosons by irradiation is required. Here, we present a new and universal approach to enable Bose-Einstein condensation of quasiparticles and to corroborate it experimentally by using magnons as the Bose-particle model system. The critical point to this approach is the introduction of a disequilibrium of magnons with the phonon bath. After heating to an elevated temperature, a sudden decrease in the temperature of the phonons, which is approximately instant on the time scales of the magnon system, results in a large excess of incoherent magnons. The consequent spectral redistribution of these magnons triggers the Bose-Einstein condensation.

Propagation of Spin-Wave Packets in Individual Nanosized Yttrium Iron Garnet Magnonic Conduits.

Modern-day CMOS-based computation technology is reaching its fundamental limitations. The emerging field of magnonics, which utilizes spin waves for data transport and processing, proposes a promising path to overcome these limitations. Different devices have been demonstrated recently on the macro- and microscale, but the feasibility of the magnonics approach essentially relies on the scalability of the structure feature size down to the extent of a few 10 nm, which are typical sizes for the established CMOS technology. Here, we present a study of propagating spin-wave packets in individual yttrium iron garnet (YIG) conduits with lateral dimensions down to 50 nm. Space and time-resolved microfocused Brillouin-light-scattering (BLS) spectroscopy is used to characterize the YIG nanostructures and measure the spin-wave decay length and group velocity directly. The revealed magnon transport at the scale comparable to the scale of CMOS proves the general feasibility of magnon-based data processing.

Automatable sample fabrication process for pump-probe X-ray holographic imaging.

Soft X-ray holography is a recently developed imaging technique with sub-50 nm spatial resolution. Key advantages of this technique are magnetic and elemental sensitivity, compatibility with imaging at free electron laser facilities, and immunity to in-situ sample excitations and sample drift, which enables the reliable detection of relative changes between two images with a precision of a few nanometers. In X-ray holography, the main part of the experimental setup is integrated in the sample, which consequently requires a large number of fabrication steps. Here we present a generic design and an automatable fabrication process for samples suitable, and optimized for, efficient high resolution X-ray holographic dynamic imaging. The high efficiency of the design facilitates the acquisition of magnetic images in a few minutes and makes fully automatic image reconstruction possible.

Polarization-independent active metamaterial for high-frequency terahertz modulation.

We present a polarization-independent metamaterial design for the construction of electrically tunable terahertz (THz) devices. The implemented structure consists of an array of gold crosses fabricated on top of an n-doped gallium arsenide (GaAs) layer. Utilizing THz time-domain spectroscopy, we show that the electric resonance and thus the transmission properties of the cross structure can be tuned by an externally applied bias voltage. We further demonstrate the fast amplitude modulation of a propagating THz wave for modulation frequencies up to 100 kHz.