Time-retarded damping and magnetic inertia in the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation self-consistently coupled to electronic time-dependent nonequilibrium Green functions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a quantum-mechanical coupling to the LLG equation, revealing time-retarded damping and inertia effects in magnetic dynamics that differ from conventional models, especially in fast-moving domain walls.

Contribution

It develops a self-consistent quantum-classical hybrid approach that captures time-dependent damping and inertia in magnetic systems, extending the conventional LLG equation.

Findings

Quantum effects cause faster domain wall motion.

Time-dependent damping and inertia parameters differ from traditional constants.

Significant discrepancies found in charge current predictions.

Abstract

The conventional Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert (LLG) equation is a widely used tool to describe dynamics of local magnetic moments, viewed as classical vectors of fixed length, with their change assumed to take place simultaneously with the cause. Here we demonstrate that recently developed [M. D. Petrovi\'{c} {\em et al.}, {\tt arXiv:1802.05682}] self-consistent coupling of the LLG equation to time-dependent quantum-mechanical description of electrons microscopically generates time-retarded damping in the LLG equation described by a memory kernel which is also spatially dependent. For sufficiently slow dynamics of local magnetic moments, the memory kernel can be expanded to extract the Gilbert damping (proportional to first time derivative of magnetization) and magnetic inertia (proportional to second time derivative of magnetization) terms whose parameters, however, are time-dependent in contrast to time-independent parameters used in the conventional LLG equation. We use examples of single or multiple magnetic moments precessing in an external magnetic field, as well as field-driven motion of a magnetic domain wall (DW), to quantify the difference in their time evolution computed from conventional LLG equation vs. TDNEGF+LLG quantum-classical hybrid approach. The faster DW motion predicted by TDNEGF+LLG approach reveals that important quantum effects, stemming from finite amount of time which it takes for conduction electron spin to react to the motion of classical local magnetic moments, are missing from conventional classical micromagnetics simulations. We also demonstrate large discrepancy between TDNEGF+LLG-computed numerically exact and, therefore, nonperturbative result for charge current pumped by a moving DW and the same quantity computed by perturbative spin motive force formula combined with the conventional LLG equation.