Researchers from Lancaster University and Radboud University Nijmegen have discovered a method to generate, modulate, and amplify propagating spin waves at the nanoscale, paving the way for energy-efficient quantum information technologies. Their work involves using light pulses to control spin waves, potentially revolutionizing data processing. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
One alternative for the “lossy” electric currents is to store and process information in waves, using the spins of the electrons instead of their charges. These spins can be seen as the elementary units of magnets.Lead author Dr Rostislav Mikhaylovskiy from Lancaster University said: “Our discovery will be essential for future spin-wave based computing. Spin waves are an appealing information carrier as they don’t involve electric currents and therefore do not suffer from resistive losses.
The researchers have used the fact that the highest possible frequencies of the spin rotations can be found in materials, in which adjacent spins are canted with respect to each other. To excite such fast spin dynamics, they used a very short pulse of light, the duration of which is shorter than the period of the spin wave, i.e. less than a trillionth of a second. The trick for generating the ultrafast spin wave at the nanoscale is in theenergy of the light pulse.