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MAGNONICS

High-speed spins

Nature Physics volume 17, pages 985–986 (2021)Cite this article

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Spin waves can carry information that could be used for data processing, but producing and controlling them can be challenging. Now it is possible to generate short-wavelength coherent spin waves that can travel at high speed over a long distance.

Magnons are the quasiparticles of spin waves, just as phonons are the quanta of lattice vibrations. Magnon-based computing may be one option for future systems in which the magnons replace electrons as the information carriers. But, current implementations of magnon platforms are often rather slow, especially when they are based on ferromagnetic materials. So, how do we speed up ‘magnonics’? Writing in Nature Physics, Jorrit Hortensius and colleagues report that they have succeeded in exciting and detecting spin-wave modes in the terahertz (THz) regime and with long coherence length in the antiferromagnetic insulator dysprosium orthoferrite (DyFeO3)1.

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Fig. 1: THz magnonics and antiferromagnetic spintronics.

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  1. Institute of Physics, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Markus Münzenberg

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  1. Markus Münzenberg
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Correspondence to Markus Münzenberg.

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Münzenberg, M. High-speed spins. Nat. Phys. 17, 985–986 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01314-z

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