Quasilinear spin voltage profiles in spin thermoelectrics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that thermoelectric effects can induce extended spin voltage profiles in ferromagnets, surpassing the typical spin diffusion length, with some profiles being linear due to conservation laws.

Contribution

It reveals that spin thermoelectric effects can produce long-range and quasilinear spin voltage profiles in ferromagnets, extending beyond traditional diffusion limits.

Findings

Spin thermoelectrics can generate extended spin voltages.

Conservation laws lead to linear spin voltage profiles.

Quasilinear profiles involve a large spin thermoelectric length scale.

Abstract

Recent experiments show that spin thermoelectrics is a promising approach to generate spin voltages. While spin chemical potentials are often limited to a surface layer of the order of the spin diffusion length, we show that thermoelectrically induced spin chemical potentials can extend much further in itinerant ferromagnets with paramagnetic impurities. In some cases, conservation laws, e.g., for a combination of spin and heat currents, give rise to a linear spin voltage profile. More generally, we find quasilinear profiles involving a spin thermoelectric length scale which far exceeds the spin diffusion length.