Paper detail

Handedness-filter and Doppler shift of spin waves in ferrimagnetic domain walls

Excitation and propagation of spin waves inside magnetic domain walls has received attention because of their potentials in spintronic and communication applications. Besides wave amplitude and frequency, spin-wave has its third character: handedness, whose manipulation is certainly of interest. We propose in this Letter that the handedness of low energy spin-wave excitations can be controlled by tuning the net angular momentum δs in a ferrimagnetic (FiM) domain wall, attributing to the inequivalent magnetic sublattices. The results indicate that the spin-wave dispersion depends on both δs and wave handedness. For a positive (negative) δs, a gapless dispersion is observed for the left-handed (righ-handed) spin waves, while a frequency gap appears for the right-handed (left-handed) spin waves. Thus a FiM wall could serve as a multifold filter of low energy spin-wave in which only spin waves with particular handedness can propagate. Furthermore, the energy consumption loss for spin-wave excitation in the wall is much lower than that inside the domain, while the group velocity is much faster too, demonstrating the advantages of domain walls serving as spin waveguides. Moreover, the current-induced spin-wave Doppler shift in the FiM wall is also revealed, and can be controlled by δs. This work unveils for the first time the interesting spin-wave dynamics in FiM domain walls, benefiting future spin-wave applications.