Quantitative evaluation method for magnetoelastic coupling between surface acoustic waves and spin waves using electrical and optical measurements

Abstract: Coupling and hybridization of different elementary excitations leads to new functionalities. In phononics and spintronics, magnetoelastic coupling between Rayleigh-type surface acoustic wave (SAW) and spin wave (SW) has recently attracted much attention. Quantitatively evaluating and comparing the coupled system are essential to develop the study of the magnetoelastic SAW-SW coupling. So far, previous studies of SAW-SW coupling have employed a quantity called coupling strength. However, it is still challenging to compare the coupling strength values among studies fairly because the quantity depends on the device geometry and the applied magnetic field angle, which are not unified among the previous studies. Here, we focus on a practical constant composed of a magnetoelastic constant and a strain amplitude that depends only on the material properties. We demonstrate a versatile evaluation technique to evaluate the practical constant by combining electrical measurements and optical imaging. An essential part of the technique is an analysis that can be used under off-resonance conditions where SAW and SW resonance frequencies do not match. Existing analysis can only handle the case under on-resonance conditions. Our analysis makes it possible to observe the magnetoelastic couplings between SAW with resonance frequencies that can be imaged optically and SW with resonance frequencies in the gigahertz range. Our demonstrated technique, which uses electrical and optical measurements under off-resonance conditions, can significantly advance research on SAW-SW coupled systems.