Nonlocal Detection of Interlayer Three-Magnon Coupling

Coherent harmonic generation of magnons in spin textures

Harmonic generation, a notable non-linear phenomenon, has promising applications in information processing. For spin-waves in ferromagnetic materials, great progress has been made in the generation higher harmonics, however probing the coherence of these higher harmonics is challenging. Here, using in-situ diamond sensors, we study the coherent harmonic generation of spin waves in a soft ferromagnet. High-order resonance lines are generated via a microwave input and detected by nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in nanodiamonds. The phase coherence of the harmonic spin waves is verified by the Rabi oscillations of the NV electron spins. Numerical simulations indicate that the harmonic generation by microwaves below the ferromagnetic resonance frequency is associated with the nonlinear mixing of spin waves by magnetization structures at the film edge. Our finding of geometry-induced magnon harmonic generation constitutes a new way to generate magnon combs with coherent high-order harmonics and may pave the way for magnon-based information processing and quantum sensing applications.

Emergent coherent modes in nonlinear magnonic waveguides detected at ultrahigh frequency resolution

Nonlinearity of dynamic systems plays a key role in neuromorphic computing, which is expected to reduce the ever-increasing power consumption of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. For spin waves (magnons), nonlinearity combined with phase coherence is the basis of phenomena like Bose-Einstein condensation, frequency combs, and pattern recognition in neuromorphic computing. Yet, the broadband electrical detection of these phenomena with high-frequency resolution remains a challenge. Here, we demonstrate the generation and detection of phase-coherent nonlinear magnons in an all-electrical GHz probe station based on coplanar waveguides connected to a vector network analyzer which we operate in a frequency-offset mode. Making use of an unprecedented frequency resolution, we resolve the nonlocal emergence of a fine structure of propagating nonlinear magnons, which sensitively depends on both power and a magnetic field. These magnons are shown to maintain coherency with the microwave source while propagating over macroscopic distances. We propose a multi-band four-magnon scattering scheme that is in agreement with the field-dependent characteristics of coherent nonlocal signals in the nonlinear excitation regime. Our findings are key to enable the seamless integration of nonlinear magnon processes into high-speed microwave electronics and to advance phase-encoded information processing in magnonic neuronal networks.

Resonant generation of propagating second-harmonic spin waves in nano-waveguides

Generation of second-harmonic waves is one of the universal nonlinear phenomena that have found numerous technical applications in many modern technologies, in particular, in photonics. This phenomenon also has great potential in the field of magnonics, which considers the use of spin waves in magnetic nanostructures to implement wave-based signal processing and computing. However, due to the strong frequency dependence of the phase velocity of spin waves, resonant phase-matched generation of second-harmonic spin waves has not yet been achieved in practice. Here, we show experimentally that such a process can be realized using a combination of different modes of nano-sized spin-wave waveguides based on low-damping magnetic insulators. We demonstrate that our approach enables efficient spatially-extended energy transfer between interacting waves, which can be controlled by the intensity of the initial wave and the static magnetic field.