Unidirectional spin-wave channeling along magnetic domain walls of Bloch type

• Published in: Physical review. B, Condensed matter and materials physics Vol. 100; no. 2
• Main Authors: Henry, Y., Stoeffler, D., Kim, J.-V., Bailleul, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 15-07-2019
• Subjects: Condensed Matter; Other; Physics; spin waves; magnetic domain walls
• ISSN: 1098-0121; 1550-235X
• DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.100.024416

From the pioneering work of Winter [Phys. Rev. 124, 452 (1961)], a magnetic domain wall of Bloch type is known to host a special wall-bound spin-wave mode, which corresponds to spin waves being channeled along the magnetic texture. Using micromagnetic simulations, we investigate spin waves traveling inside Bloch walls formed in thin magnetic media with perpendicular-to-plane magnetic anisotropy and we show that their propagation is actually strongly nonreciprocal, as a result of dynamic dipolar interactions. We investigate spin-wave nonreciprocity effects in single Bloch walls, which allows us to clearly pinpoint their origin, as well as in arrays of parallel walls in stripe-domain configurations. For such arrays, a complex domain-wall-bound spin-wave band structure develops, some aspects of which can be understood qualitatively from the single-wall picture by considering that a wall array consists of a sequence of up/down and down/up walls with opposite nonreciprocities. Circumstances are identified in which the nonreciprocity is so extreme that spin-wave propagation inside individual walls becomes unidirectional.