The SWANGATE project aims to develop a new approach for magnonic devices at the nanometer scale. Magnonic devices rely on the coherent propagation of spin waves (SW) at the sub-micron length scale. Manipulation of spin-waves propagating inside sub-micrometer waveguides is at the core of promoting the practical application of these devices.
In this project, we will investigate a completely new paradigm in which magnetic domain walls (DW) are used as natural nanometer scale waveguides for spin waves. This highly innovative approach presents two main advantages.
First, by a judicious choice of excitation frequency only spin-waves in the domain walls are generated. This allows working with confined SW with frequencies compatible with standard and future communication protocols. Moreover this approach naturally makes the resulting Spin Wave based Devices (SWD) at the nanometer scale while suppressing the need for lithographically defined magnetic tracks.
Second, DW waveguides are reconfigurable. Indeed by shaping and reshaping the magnetic domain pattern we can design and re-design the waveguides form and so the functionality of the SWDs. This will also allow creating much more sophisticated waveguide structures.
Figure: a) Curved ferromagnetic stripe 200 nm in width and 1 nm in thickness. The stripe is magnetized perpendicularly and divided in three domains, two up (blue) and one down (red). The two Domain Walls (DW), which are of Néel type here, appear in grey. b) SW profile generated by the microwave field at 5 GHz localized below the antenna (green). The excitation frequency is below the gap of the domain SW modes. We can see that the excited SW are confined inside the DWs. From F. Garcia-Sanchez et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 247206