Ultra-low magnetic damping of a metallic ferromagnet

TL;DR

This paper reports a Co-Fe alloy with ultra-low magnetic damping approaching 0.0001, challenging previous beliefs about metallic ferromagnets and advancing understanding of magnetic damping mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces a Co-Fe alloy with unprecedented low damping and links this to a unique bandstructure feature, providing new insights into damping control.

Findings

Damping parameter approaches 0.0001 in the alloy.

A sharp minimum in the density of states correlates with low damping.

The alloy's damping is comparable to ferrimagnetic insulators.

Abstract

The phenomenology of magnetic damping is of critical importance for devices that seek to exploit the electronic spin degree of freedom since damping strongly affects the energy required and speed at which a device can operate. However, theory has struggled to quantitatively predict the damping, even in common ferromagnetic materials. This presents a challenge for a broad range of applications in spintronics and spin-orbitronics that depend on materials and structures with ultra-low damping. Such systems enable many experimental investigations that further our theoretical understanding of numerous magnetic phenomena such as damping and spin-transport mediated by chirality and the Rashba effect. Despite this requirement, it is believed that achieving ultra-low damping in metallic ferromagnets is limited due to the scattering of magnons by the conduction electrons. However, we report on a binary alloy of Co and Fe that overcomes this obstacle and exhibits a damping parameter approaching 0.0001, which is comparable to values reported only for ferrimagnetic insulators. We explain this phenomenon by a unique feature of the bandstructure in this system: The density of states exhibits a sharp minimum at the Fermi level at the same alloy concentration at which the minimum in the magnetic damping is found. This discovery provides both a significant fundamental understanding of damping mechanisms as well as a test of theoretical predictions.