Concepedia

Domain-Wall Induced Phase Shifts in Spin Waves

Riccardo Hertel, Wulf Wulfhekel, J. Kirschner

Physical Review Letters · 2004 · 340 citations · 26 references

TL;DR

The study investigates how magnetic domain walls alter spin‑wave phase and proposes using a ring interferometer to probe this effect, aiming to enable nanoscale spin‑wave logic devices. The authors suggest a ring interferometer that splits spin waves into branches, analogous to an Aharonov‑Bohm experiment, to detect domain‑wall‑induced phase shifts. Micromagnetic simulations show that spin waves acquire a phase shift when traversing domain walls, and the resulting interference depends on the domain‑wall configuration in the ring branches.

Abstract

We study the interaction between two important features of ferromagnetic nanoparticles: magnetic domain walls and spin waves. Micromagnetic simulations reveal that magnetostatic spin waves change their phase as they pass through domain walls. Similar to an Aharonov-Bohm experiment, we suggest to probe this effect by splitting the waves on different branches of a ring. The interference of merging waves depends on the domain walls in the branches. A controlled manipulation of spin-wave phases could be the first step towards nanoscaled ferromagnetic devices performing logical operations based on spin-wave propagation.