Gilbert damping in two-dimensional metallic anti-ferromagnets

Abstract

A finite spin life-time of conduction electrons may dominate Gilbert damping of two-dimensional metallic anti-ferromagnets or anti-ferromagnet/metal heterostructures. We investigate the Gilbert damping tensor for a typical low-energy model of a metallic anti-ferromagnet system with honeycomb magnetic lattice and Rashba spin-orbit coupling for conduction electrons. We distinguish three regimes of spin relaxation: exchange-dominated relaxation for weak spin-orbit coupling strength, Elliot-Yafet relaxation for moderate spin-orbit coupling, and Dyakonov-Perel relaxation for strong spin-orbit coupling. We show, however, that the latter regime takes place only for the in-plane Gilbert damping component. We also show that anisotropy of Gilbert damping persists for any finite spin-orbit interaction strength provided we consider no spatial variation of the Néel vector. Isotropic Gilbert damping is restored only if the electron spin-orbit length is larger than the magnon wavelength. Our theory applies to MnPS3 monolayer on Pt or to similar systems.

11 pages, 6 figures

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