Reconstruction of an effective magnon mean free path distribution from spin Seebeck measurements in thin films

Abstract

A thorough understanding of the mean-free-path (MFP) distribution of the energy carriers is crucial to engineer and tune the transport properties of materials. In this context, a significant body of work has investigated the phonon and electron MFP distribution, however, similar studies of the magnon MFP distribution have not been carried out so far. In this work, we used thickness-dependence measurements of the longitudinal spin Seebeck (LSSE) effect of yttrium iron garnet films to reconstruct the cumulative distribution of a SSE related effective magnon MFP. By using the experimental data reported by Guo et al. [Phys. Rev. X 6, 031012 (2016)], we adapted the phonon MFP reconstruction algorithm proposed by A.J. Minnich, [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 205901 (2012)] and apply it to magnons. The reconstruction showed that magnons with different MFP contribute in different manner to the total LSSE and the effective magnon MFP distribution spreads far beyond their typical averaged values.

arXiv comment16 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (14)

• Spin Caloritronics
• Long distance transport of magnon spin information in a magnetic insulator at room temperature
• Theory of the Spin Seebeck Effect
• Spin torque study of the spin Hall conductivity and spin diffusion length in platinum thin films with varying resistivity
• Intrinsic Spin Seebeck Effect in Au/YIG
• Ab initio study of electron-phonon interaction in phosphorene
• Critical suppression of spin Seebeck effect by magnetic fields
• Determination of the origin of the spin Seebeck effect - bulk vs. interface effects
• First-Principles Simulation of Electron Mean-Free-Path Spectra and Thermoelectric Properties in Silicon
• Long range pure magnon spin diffusion observed in a non-local spin-Seebeck geometry
• Origin of the thickness-dependent low-temperature enhancement of spin Seebeck effect in YIG films
• Magnetic field dependence of the magnon spin diffusion length in the magnetic insulator yttrium iron garnet
• Propagation of Thermally Induced Magnonic Spin Currents
• Surface sensitivity of the spin Seebeck effect

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Modulation of magnon spin transport in a magnetic gate transistor
• Spin Seebeck effect and ballistic transport of quasi-acoustic magnons in room-temperature yttrium iron garnet films
• Magnon currents excited by the spin Seebeck effect in ferromagnetic EuS thin films
• Impact of the regularization parameter in the Mean Free Path reconstruction method: Nanoscale heat transport and beyond