Nano-structured magnetic metamaterial with enhanced nonlinear properties

Nano-structuring can significantly modify the properties of materials. We demonstrate that size-dependent modification of the spin-wave spectra in magnetic nano-particles can affect not only linear, but also nonlinear magnetic response. The discretization of the spectrum removes the frequency degeneracy between the main excitation mode of a nano-particle and the higher spin-wave modes, having the lowest magnetic damping, and reduces the strength of multi-magnon relaxation processes. This reduction of magnon-magnon relaxation for the main excitation mode leads to a dramatic increase of its lifetime and amplitude, resulting in the intensification of all the nonlinear processes involving this mode. We demonstrate this experimentally on a two-dimensional array of permalloy nano-dots for the example of parametric generation of a sub-harmonic of an external microwave signal. The characteristic lifetime of this sub-harmonic is increased by two orders of magnitude compared to the case of a continuous magnetic film, where magnon-magnon relaxation limits the lifetime

All-linear time reversal by a dynamic artificial crystal

The time reversal of pulsed signals or propagating wave packets has long been recognized to have profound scientific and technological significance. Until now, all experimentally verified time-reversal mechanisms have been reliant upon nonlinear phenomena such as four-wave mixing. In this paper, we report the experimental realization of all-linear time reversal. The time-reversal mechanism we propose is based on the dynamic control of an artificial crystal structure, and is demonstrated in a spin-wave system using a dynamic magnonic crystal. The crystal is switched from an homogeneous state to one in which its properties vary with spatial period a, while a propagating wave packet is inside. As a result, a linear coupling between wave components with wave vectors k≈π/a and k′=k−2ππ/a≈−π/a is produced, which leads to spectral inversion, and thus to the formation of a time-reversed wave packet. The reversal mechanism is entirely general and so applicable to artificial crystal systems of any physical nature