Magnonics is a budding research field in nanomagnetism and nanoscience that addresses the use of spin waves (magnons) to transmit, store, and process information. The rapid advancements of this field during last one decade in terms of upsurge in research papers, review articles, citations, proposals of devices as well as introduction of new sub-topics prompted us to present the first roadmap on magnonics. This is a collection of 22 sections written by leading experts in this field who review and discuss the current status besides presenting their vision of future perspectives. Today, the principal challenges in applied magnonics are the excitation of sub-100 nm wavelength magnons, their manipulation on the nanoscale and the creation of sub-micrometre devices using low-Gilbert damping magnetic materials and its interconnections to standard electronics. To this end, magnonics offers lower energy consumption, easier integrability and compatibility with CMOS structure, reprogrammability, shorter wavelength, smaller device features, anisotropic properties, negative group velocity, non-reciprocity and efficient tunability by various external stimuli to name a few. Hence, despite being a young research field, magnonics has come a long way since its early inception. This roadmap asserts a milestone for future emerging research directions in magnonics, and hopefully, it will inspire a series of exciting new articles on the same topic in the coming years.
We show that the spin-wave spectrum in an elliptical helix has a band character. The size of the first band gap calculated using the perturbation theory is shown to scale as square root of the eccentricity. Curved magnonic waveguides of the kind considered here could be used as structural elements of future three-dimensional magnonic architectures.
We show that chemical fixation enables top-down micro-machining of large periodic 3D arrays of protein-encapsulated magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) without loss of order. We machined 3D micro-cubes containing a superlattice of NPs by means of focused ion beam etching, integrated an individual micro-cube to a thin-film coplanar waveguide and measured the resonant microwave response. Our work represents a major step towards well-defined magnonic metamaterials created from the self-assembly of magnetic nanoparticles.
Magnetite Nanoparticles/chemistry , Protein Array Analysis/methods , Crystallization , Ferritins/chemistry
Ultrafast non-thermal manipulation of magnetization by light relies on either indirect coupling of the electric field component of the light with spins via spin-orbit interaction or direct coupling between the magnetic field component and spins. Here we propose a scenario for coupling between the electric field of light and spins via optical modification of the exchange interaction, one of the strongest quantum effects with strength of 10(3) Tesla. We demonstrate that this isotropic opto-magnetic effect, which can be called inverse magneto-refraction, is allowed in a material of any symmetry. Its existence is corroborated by the experimental observation of terahertz emission by spin resonances optically excited in a broad class of iron oxides with a canted spin configuration. From its strength we estimate that a sub-picosecond modification of the exchange interaction by laser pulses with fluence of about 1 mJ cm(-2) acts as a pulsed effective magnetic field of 0.01 Tesla.
We develop a systematic approach to derive boundary conditions at an interface between two ferromagnetic materials in the continuous medium approximation. The approach treats the interface as a two-sublattice material, although the final equations connect magnetizations outside of the interface and therefore do not explicitly depend on its structure. Instead, the boundary conditions are defined in terms of some average properties of the interface, which may also have a finite thickness. In addition to the interface anisotropy and symmetric exchange coupling, this approach allows us to take into account coupling resulting from inversion symmetry breaking in the vicinity of the interface, such as the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya antisymmetric exchange interaction. In the case of negligible interface anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya exchange parameters, the derived boundary conditions represent a generalization of those proposed earlier by Barnas and Mills and are therefore named 'generalized Barnas-Mills boundary conditions'. We demonstrate how one could use the boundary conditions to extract parameters of the interface via fitting of appropriate experimental data. The developed theory could be applied to modeling of both linear and non-linear spin waves, including exchange, dipole-exchange, magnetostatic, and retarded modes, as well as to calculations of non-uniform equilibrium micromagnetic configurations near the interface, with a direct impact on the research in magnonics and micromagnetism.
An all-optical experiment long utilized to image phonons excited by ultrashort optical pulses has been applied to a magnetic sample. In addition to circular ripples due to surface acoustic waves, we observe an X-shaped pattern formed by propagating spin waves. The emission of spin waves from the optical pulse epicenter in the form of collimated beams is qualitatively reproduced by micromagnetic simulations. We explain the observed pattern in terms of the group velocity distribution of Damon-Eshbach magnetostatic spin waves in the reciprocal space and the wave vector spectrum of the focused ultrafast laser pulse.
The ultrafast (sub-nanosecond) magnetization dynamics of ferromagnetic thin films and elements that find application in spintronic devices is reviewed. The major advances in the understanding of magnetization dynamics in the two decades since the discovery of giant magnetoresistance and the prediction of spin-transfer torque are discussed, along with the plethora of new experimental techniques developed to make measurements on shorter length and time scales. Particular consideration is given to time-resolved measurements of the magneto-optical Kerr effect, and it is shown how a succession of studies performed with this technique has led to an improved understanding of the dynamics of nanoscale magnets. The dynamics can be surprisingly rich and complicated, with the latest studies of individual nanoscale elements showing that the dependence of the resonant mode spectrum upon the physical structure is still not well understood. Finally, the article surveys the prospects for development of high-frequency spintronic devices and highlights areas in which further study of fundamental properties will be required within the coming decade.
We have used time resolved scanning Kerr microscopy to image collective spin wave modes within a 2D array of magnetic nanoelements. Long wavelength spin waves are confined within the array as if it was a continuous element of the same size but with effective material properties determined by the structure of the array and its constituent nanoelements. The array is an example of a magnonic metamaterial, the demonstration of which provides new opportunities within the emerging field of magnonics.
