Excitation of spin waves in ferromagnetic (Ga,Mn)As layers by picosecond strain pulses

Abstract

We report the excitation of spin waves in ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As films by picosecond strain pulses. The strain pulse with a broad acoustic spectrum excites a number of magnon modes, which contribute to the precession of magnetization. The spectrum of the excited spin waves shows two well-resolved peaks with intensities dependent on the applied magnetic field. For a certain range of magnetic fields only the low-frequency spin wave is detected. We present the theoretical analysis and compare it with the experimental results, addressing the spatial overlap of the magnon and phonon eigenfunctions. Depending on the boundary conditions and the spectrum of the spin waves the spatial matching of the spin wave and resonance phonon eigenfunctions may provide high excitation efficiency for only one magnon mode, while other modes are not excited.