Spin Wave Interference in Magnetic Nanostructures

Although yttrium iron garnet (YIG) has provided a great vehicle for the study of spin waves in the past, associated difficulties in film deposition and device fabrication using YIG had limited the applicability of spin waves to practical devices. However, microfabrication techniques have made it possible to characterize both the resonant as well as the travelling characteristics of spin waves in permalloy (Py). A variety of methods have been used for measuring spin waves, including Brillouin light scattering (BLS), magneto-optic Kerr effect (MOKE), vector network analyzer ferromagnetic resonance (VNA-FMR), and pulse inductive microwave magnetometry (PIMM). PIMM is one of the most preferred methodologies of measuring travelling spin waves. In this method, an electrical impulse is applied at one of two coplanar waveguides patterned on top of oxide-insulated Py, producing a local disturbance in the magnetization of the Py. The resulting disturbance travels down the Py in the form of waves, and is inductively picked up by the other coplanar waveguide. We investigate the effect of the pulse width of excitation pulses on the generated spin wave packets using both experimental results and micromagnetic simulations. We show that spin wave packets generated from electrical pulses are a superposition of two separate spin wave packets, one generated from the rising edge and the other from the falling edge, which interfere either constructively or destructively with one another, depending upon the magnitude and direction of the field bias conditions. A method of spin wave amplitude modulation is also presented by the linear superposition of spin waves. We use interfering spin waves resulting from two closely spaced voltage impulses for the modulation of the magnitude of the resultant spin wave packets.