Thermal gating of magnon exchange in magnetic multilayers with antiferromagnetic spacers

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates thermally-controlled magnon-mediated coupling in magnetic multilayers with antiferromagnetic spacers, enabling temperature and thickness-dependent coherent switching of ferromagnetic layers.

Contribution

It reveals a novel thermal gating mechanism for magnon exchange in multilayers with antiferromagnetic spacers, highlighting hybridization of magnon modes near the Néel temperature.

Findings

Strong thermally-controlled interlayer coupling observed

Coherent switching of ferromagnets controlled by temperature and spacer thickness

Hybridization of magnon modes explained the behavior

Abstract

We observe a strong thermally-controlled magnon-mediated interlayer coupling of two ferromagnetic layers via an antiferromagnetic spacer in spin-valve type trilayers. The effect manifests itself as a field-induced coherent switching of the two ferromagnets, which can be controlled by varying temperature and the spacer thickness. We explain the observed behavior as due to a strong hybridization of the ferro- and antiferro-magnetic magnon modes in the trilayer at temperatures just below the N\'eel temperature of the antiferromagnetic spacer.