Nonlinear spin-Wave Doppler effect for flexible tuning of magnonic frequencies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nonlinear spin-wave Doppler effect where dynamic magnetic boundaries actively modulate frequencies, enabling on-chip spectral synthesis and flexible magnonic frequency tuning without nonlinear magnon interactions.

Contribution

It proposes a novel nonlinear Doppler mechanism driven by boundary kinematics, demonstrated through micromagnetic simulations, for tunable magnonic frequency generation.

Findings

Boundary motion directly couples to spin-wave spectra, creating high-order harmonics and combs.

Spectral features depend solely on boundary kinematics, not nonlinear magnon interactions.

Moving magnetic boundaries serve as on-chip spectral synthesizers for magnonic frequencies.

Abstract

We theoretically propose a nonlinear spin-wave Doppler effect, in which the time-dependent motion of a magnetic energy boundary acts as an active frequency modulator, directly converting boundary-induced phase dynamics into instantaneous spectral synthesis for propagating spin-wave modes. In contrast to the conventional linear Doppler effect governed by constant relative velocity, this mechanism enables dynamic phase-to-frequency transduction, generating high-order harmonics, magnonic frequency combs, and coherent chirped sidebands, without requiring nonlinear magnon-magnon coupling or multi-magnon scattering. Micromagnetic simulations on voltage-controlled anisotropy boundaries in ferroelectric/ferromagnetic (FE/FM) heterostructures demonstrate that the comb spacing and spectral topology are determined solely by boundary kinematics, confirming direct Doppler phase coupling between boundary motion and spin-wave propagation. These results establish moving magnetic-energy boundaries as a new class of on-chip spectral synthesizers and define a coherent and energy-efficient framework for flexible tuning of magnonic frequencies, fundamentally distinct from traditional passive scattering or nonlinear multi-magnon mechanisms.