Microscopic spin-wave theory for yttrium-iron garnet films

Motivated by recent experiments on thin films of the ferromagnetic insulator yttrium-iron garnet (YIG), we have developed an efficient microscopic approach to calculate the spin-wave spectra of these systems. We model the experimentally relevant magnon band of YIG using an effective quantum Heisenbe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The European physical journal. B, Condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics, 2009-09, Vol.71 (1), p.59-68
Main Authors: Kreisel, A., Sauli, F., Bartosch, L., Kopietz, P.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Complex Systems
Condensed Matter Physics
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Exact sciences and technology
Fluid- and Aerodynamics
Magnetic properties and materials
Magnetic properties of monolayers and thin films
Magnetic properties of surface, thin films and multilayers
Magnetically ordered materials: other intrinsic properties
Physics
Physics and Astronomy
Solid State and Materials
Solid State Physics
Spin waves
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Summary:Motivated by recent experiments on thin films of the ferromagnetic insulator yttrium-iron garnet (YIG), we have developed an efficient microscopic approach to calculate the spin-wave spectra of these systems. We model the experimentally relevant magnon band of YIG using an effective quantum Heisenberg model on a cubic lattice with ferromagnetic nearest neighbour exchange and long-range dipole-dipole interactions. After a bosonization of the spin degrees of freedom via a Holstein-Primakoff transformation and a truncation at quadratic order in the bosons, we obtain the spin-wave spectra for experimentally relevant parameters without further approximation by numerical diagonalization, using efficient Ewald summation techniques to carry out the dipolar sums. We compare our numerical results with two different analytic approximations and with predictions based on the phenomenological Landau-Lifshitz equation.
ISSN:1434-6028
1434-6036
DOI:10.1140/epjb/e2009-00279-y