Core Concepts
Canted antiferromagnets can facilitate ultrafast conversion of magnons at the Brillouin zone center into propagating magnons through nonlinear magnon-magnon interactions activated by ultrafast laser pulses.
Abstract
The content discusses the unique properties and potential applications of canted antiferromagnets, a class of magnetic materials that combine antiferromagnetic order with phenomena typically associated with ferromagnets. Canted antiferromagnets exhibit net magnetization due to an additional antisymmetric spin-spin interaction arising from strong spin-orbit coupling.
The key highlights are:
Canted antiferromagnets can be considered closely related to the recently proposed "altermagnets", which are predicted to have strong magneto-optical effects, terahertz-frequency spin dynamics, and degeneracy lifting for chiral spin waves - all of which are also present in canted antiferromagnets.
The authors demonstrate a new functionality of canted spin order for magnonics, showing that it facilitates mechanisms for converting a magnon at the center of the Brillouin zone into propagating magnons using nonlinear magnon-magnon interactions activated by an ultrafast laser pulse.
The experimental findings, supported by theoretical analysis, indicate that this mechanism is enabled by the spin canting in these materials.
The ability to efficiently convert magnons in canted antiferromagnets holds great potential for spintronics and magnonics applications.