Prototypes of quantum impurities, such as NV and SiV color centers in diamond, have garnered much attention due to their minimally invasive and high-resolution magnetic field and thermal sensing. ...Here, we investigate quantum-impurity relaxometry as a method for probing collective excitations in magnetic insulators. We develop a general framework to relate the measurable quantum-impurity relaxation rates to the intrinsic dynamic properties of a magnetic system via the noise emitted by the latter. We suggest, in particular, that the quantum-impurity relaxometry is sensitive to dynamic phase transitions, such as magnon condensation, and can be deployed to detect signatures of the associated coherent spin dynamics, both in ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems. Finally, we discuss prospects to nonintrusively probe spin-transport regimes and measure the associated transport coefficients in magnetic insulators.
While the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition (BKT) has been under intense scrutiny for decades, unambiguous experimental signatures in magnetic systems remain elusive. Here, we investigate ...the interplay between electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom near the BKT transition. Focusing on a metal with easy-plane ferromagnetic order, we establish a framework that accounts both for the coupling between the charge current and the flow of topological magnetic defects and for electron scattering on their inhomogeneous spin texture. We show that electron scattering is responsible for a temperature-dependent magnetoresistance effect scaling as the density of the topological defects, which is expected to increase dramatically above the BKT transition temperature. Our findings call for further experimental investigations.
We investigate coupled spin and heat transport in easy-plane magnetic insulators. These materials display a continuous phase transition between normal and condensate states that is controlled by an ...external magnetic field. Using hydrodynamic equations supplemented by Gross-Pitaevski phenomenology and magnetoelectric circuit theory, we derive a two-fluid model to describe the dynamics of thermal and condensed magnons, and the appropriate boundary conditions in a hybrid normal-metal-magnetic-insulator-normal-metal heterostructure. We discuss how the emergent spin superfluidity can be experimentally probed via a spin Seebeck effect measurement.
When time-reversal symmetry is broken, the low-energy description of acoustic lattice dynamics allows for a dissipationless component of the viscosity tensor, the phonon Hall viscosity, which ...captures how phonon chirality grows with the wave vector. In this work, we show that, in ionic crystals, a phonon Hall viscosity contribution is produced by the Lorentz forces on moving ions. We calculate typical values of the Lorentz force contribution to the Hall viscosity using a simple square lattice toy model, and we compare it with literature estimates of the strengths of other Hall-viscosity mechanisms.
Abstract In this work we examine synthetic antiferromagnetic structures consisting of two, three, and four antiferromagnetic coupled layers, i.e. bilayers, trilayers, and tetralayers. We vary the ...thickness of the ferromagnetic layers across all structures and, using a macrospin formalism, find that the nearest neighbor exchange interaction between layers is consistent across all structures for a given thickness of the ferromagnetic layer. Our model and experimental results demonstrate significant differences in how the static equilibrium states of even and odd-layered structures evolve as a function of the external field. Even layered structures continuously evolve from a collinear antiferromagnetic state to a spin canted non-collinear magnetic configuration that is mirror-symmetric about the external field. In contrast, odd-layered structures begin with a ferrimagnetic ground state; at a critical field, the ferrimagnetic ground state evolves into a non-collinear state with broken symmetry. Specifically, the magnetic moments found in the odd-layered samples possess stable static equilibrium states that are no longer mirror-symmetric about the external field after a critical field is reached.
The scalability of quantum networks based on solid-state spin qubits is hampered by the short range of natural spin-spin interactions. Here, we propose a scheme to entangle distant spin qubits via ...the soft modes of an antiferromagnetic domain wall (DW). As spin qubits, we focus on quantum impurities (QIs) placed in the vicinity of an insulating antiferromagnetic thin film. The low-energy modes harbored by the DW are embedded in the antiferromagnetic bulk, whose intrinsic spin-wave dynamics have a gap that can exceed the THz range. By setting the QI frequency and the temperature well within the bulk gap, we focus on the dipolar interaction between the QI and two soft modes localized at the DW. One is a stringlike mode associated with transverse displacements of the DW position, while the dynamics of the other, corresponding to planar rotations of the Néel order parameter, constitute a spin superfluid. By choosing the geometry in which the QI does not couple to the string mode, we use an external magnetic field to control the gap of the spin superfluid and the qubit-qubit coupling it engenders. We suggest that a tunable micron-range coherent coupling between qubits can be established using common antiferromagnetic materials.