Nano-Scale Magnonic Circuits for Novel Computing Systems

Magnons – quanta of spin waves – propagating in magnetic materials having nano-scale wavelengths and carrying information in the form of a spin angular momentum, can be used as data carriers in next-generation nano-sized low-loss information processing systems. The low losses of magnonic systems can be reached due to the absence of translational electron motion associated with Joule heating and extremely low magnetic damping in the dielectric Yttrium-Iron-Garnet (YIG) material used.

The recent revolutionary progress in the growth of high-quality YIG films with nanometer thickness, and in the patterning of these films, opened a way to the practical development of nano-scale magnonic computing systems. However, the decrease in sizes of YIG structures to sub-100 nm requires the development of the physical knowledge base for understanding linear and nonlinear magnetization dynamics in nanostructures.

The strategic goal of the proposed MAGNONCIRCUITS research program is to make a transformative change in the data processing paradigm from traditional electronics to magnon spintronics. The ingredients required for such a transformation and addressed by MAGNONCIRCUITS are: (i) The fabrication of magnon conduits of sub-100 nm width, the development of a toolbox enabling excitation and detection of fast exchange magnons, and the understanding of the physics underlying magnon dynamics at the nano-scale in the exchange interaction regime. (ii) Employment of such novel physical phenomena as spin pumping, spin transfer torque and spin Hall effect to overcome the fundamental limitations of the state-of-the-art approaches in magnon spintronics, and to compensate the dissipation in magnonic circuits. (iii) Realization of two-dimensional magnonic circuits required for transport and processing of magnon-carried data. A proof-of-concept models of two nanoscale devices – majority gate and magnon transistor – will be developed in the course of MAGNONCIRCUITS.