No abstract

The magnetoelastic effect—the change of magnetic properties caused by the elastic deformation of a magnetic material—has been proposed as an alternative approach to magnetic fields for the low-power control of magnetization states of nanoelements since it avoids charge currents, which entail ohmic losses. Here, we have studied the effect of dynamic strain accompanying a surface acoustic wave on magnetic nanostructures in thermal equilibrium. We have developed an experimental technique based on stroboscopic X-ray microscopy that provides a pathway to the quantitative study of strain waves and magnetization at the nanoscale. We have simultaneously imaged the evolution of both strain and magnetization dynamics of nanostructures at the picosecond time scale and found that magnetization modes have a delayed response to the strain modes, adjustable by the magnetic domain configuration. Our results provide fundamental insight into magnetoelastic coupling in nanostructures and have implications for the design of strain-controlled magnetostrictive nano-devices.

Using hybrid piezoelectric-magnetic systems we have generated large amplitude magnetization waves mediated by magnetoelasticity with up to 25 degrees variation in the magnetization orientation. We present direct imaging and quantification of both standing and propagating acoustomagnetic waves with different wavelengths, over large distances up to several millimeters in a nickel thin film.

Magnetic droplet solitons were first predicted to occur in materials with uniaxial magnetic anisotropy due to a long-range attractive interaction between elementary magnetic excitations, magnons. A non-equilibrium magnon population provided by a spin-polarized current in nanocontacts enables their creation and there is now clear experimental evidence for their formation, including direct images obtained with scanning x-ray transmission microscopy. Interest in magnetic droplets is associated with their unique magnetic dynamics that can lead to new types of high frequency nanometer scale oscillators of interest for information processing, including in neuromorphic computing. However, there are no direct measurements of the time required to nucleate droplet solitons or their lifetime–experiments to date only probe their steady-state characteristics, their response to dc spin-currents. Here we determine the timescales for droplet annihilation and generation using current pulses. Annihilation occurs in a few nanoseconds while generation can take several nanoseconds to a microsecond depending on the pulse amplitude. Micromagnetic simulations show that there is an incubation time for droplet generation that depends sensitively on the initial magnetic state of the nanocontact. An understanding of these processes is essential to utilizing the unique characteristics of magnetic droplet solitons oscillators, including their high frequency, tunable and hysteretic response.