Origin of the spin Seebeck effect in compensated ferrimagnets

Geprgs, S.*; Kehlberger, A.*; Coletta, F.*; Qiu, Z.*; Guo, E.-J.*; Schulz, T.*; Mix, C.*; Meyer, S.*; Kamra, A.*; Althammer, M.*; et al.

Nature Communications (Internet), 7, p.10452_1 - 10452_6, 2016/02

https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10452

Magnons are the elementary excitations of a magnetically ordered system. Here, we show that the spin Seebeck effect is sensitive to the complexities of the magnon spectrum. The spin Seebeck effect is caused by a thermally excited spin dynamics that is converted to a voltage by the inverse spin Hall effect at the interface to a heavy metal contact. By investigating the temperature dependence of the spin Seebeck effect in the ferrimagnet gadlinium iron garnet, with a magnetic compensation point near room temperature, we demonstrate that high-energy exchange magnons play a key role in the spin Seebeck effect.