The appearance of spontaneous coherence is a fundamental feature of a Bose-Einstein condensate and an essential requirement for possible applications of the condensates for data processing and quantum computing. In the case of a magnon condensate in a magnetic crystal, such computing can be performed even at room temperature. So far, the process of coherence formation in a magnon condensate was inaccessible. We study the evolution of magnon radiation spectra by direct detection of microwave radiation emitted by magnons in a parametrically driven yttrium iron garnet crystal. By using specially shaped bulk samples, we show that the parametrically overpopulated magnon gas evolves to a state, whose coherence is only limited by the natural magnon relaxation into the crystal lattice.
The experimental investigation of the spin pumping process by dipolar‐exchange magnons parametrically excited in in‐plane magnetized yttrium iron garnet/platinum bilayers is presented. The electric voltage generated in the platinum layer via the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE) results from contributions of two opposite spin currents formed by the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect and by the spin pumping from parametric magnons. In the field‐dependent measurements of the spin pumping‐induced component of the ISHE‐voltage, a clearly visible sharp peak is detected at high pumping powers. It is found that the peak position is determined by the process of confluence of two parametrically excited magnons into one magnon possessing twice the frequency and the sum of the wavevectors of the initial magnons. It is demonstrated that under the action of a rather strong parametric pumping field this confluence process results in the increase of the total number of magnons in the magnetic sample, and thus leads to the enhancement of the spin pumping effect.
We studied the transient behavior of the spin current generated by the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) in a set of platinum-coated yttrium iron garnet (YIG) films of different thicknesses. The LSSE was induced by means of pulsed microwave heating of the Pt layer and the spin currents were measured electrically using the inverse spin Hall effect in the same layer. We demonstrate that the time evolution of the LSSE is determined by the evolution of the thermal gradient triggering the flux of thermal magnons in the vicinity of the YIG/Pt interface. These magnons move ballistically within the YIG film with a constant group velocity, while their number decays exponentially within an effective propagation length. The ballistic flight of the magnons with energies above 20 K is a result of their almost linear dispersion law, similar to that of acoustic phonons. By fitting the time-dependent LSSE signal for different film thicknesses varying by almost an order of magnitude, we found that the effective propagation length is practically independent of the YIG film thickness. We consider this fact as strong support of a ballistic transport scenario—the ballistic propagation of quasi-acoustic magnons in room temperature YIG.
We experimentally study the transient voltage response of yttrium iron garnet/platinum bilayer samples subject to periodic heating up to gigahertz frequencies. We observe an intrinsic cutoff frequency of the induced thermopower voltage, which characteristically depends on the thickness of the yttrium iron garnet film. The cutoff frequency reaches values of up to 350 MHz in a 50 nm thick yttrium iron garnet film, but drops to below 1 MHz for several-micrometer-thick films. These data corroborate the notion that the magnon spectrum responsible for the spin current emission in the spin Seebeck effect can be shaped by tuning the thickness of the ferromagnetic layer.