Direct observation of magnon-phonon coupling in yttrium iron garnet

Author(s): Man, H; Shi, Z; Xu, G; Xu, Y; Chen, X; Sullivan, S; Zhou, J; Xia, K; Shi, J; Dai, P | Abstract: © 2017 American Physical Society. us. The magnetic insulator yttrium iron garnet (YIG) with a ferrimagnetic transition temperature of ∼560 K has been widely used in microwave and spintronic devices. Anomalous features in spin Seeback effect (SSE) voltages have been observed in Pt/YIG and attributed to magnon-phonon coupling. Here, we use inelastic neutron scattering to map out low-energy spin waves and acoustic phonons of YIG at 100 K as a function of increasing magnetic field. By comparing the zero and 9.1 T data, we find that instead of splitting and opening up gaps at the spin wave and acoustic phonon dispersion intersecting points, magnon-phonon coupling in YIG enhances the hybridized scattering intensity. These results are different from expectations of conventional spin-lattice coupling, calling for different paradigms to understand the scattering process of magnon-phonon interactions and the resulting magnon polarons.