Thermalization of hot electrons via interfacial electron-magnon interaction

Recent work on layered structures of superconductors (S) or normal metals (N) in contact with ferromagnetic insulators (FI) has shown how the properties of the previous can be strongly affected by the magnetic proximity effect due to the static FI magnetization. Here we show that such structures can also exhibit a new electron thermalization mechanism due to the coupling of electrons with the dynamic magnetization, i.e., magnons in FI. We here study the heat flow between the two systems and find that in thin films the heat conductance due to the interfacial electron-magnon collisions can dominate over the well-known electron-phonon coupling below a certain characteristic temperature that can be straightforwardly reached with present-day experiments. We also study the role of the magnon band gap and the induced spin-splitting field induced in S on the resulting heat conductance and show that heat balance experiments can reveal information about such quantities in a way quite different from typical magnon spectroscopy experiments

Cyclostationary measurement of low-frequency odd moments of current fluctuations

Measurement of odd moments of current fluctuations is difficult due to strict requirements for band-pass filtering. We propose how these requirements can be overcome using cyclostationary driving of the measured signal and indicate how the measurement accuracy can be tested through the phase dependence of the moments of the fluctuations. We consider two schemes, the mixing scheme and the statistics scheme, where the current statistics can be accessed. We also address the limitations of the schemes, due to excess noise and due to the effects of the environment, and, finally, discuss the required measurement times for typical setups.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Thermopower induced by a supercurrent in superconductor-normal-metal structures

We examine the thermopower Q of a mesoscopic normal-metal (N) wire in contact to superconducting (S) segments and show that even with electron-hole symmetry, Q may become finite due to the presence of supercurrents. Moreover, we show how the dominant part of Q can be directly related to the equilibrium supercurrents in the structure. In general, a finite thermopower appears both between the N reservoirs and the superconductors, and between the N reservoirs themselves. The latter, however, strongly depends on the geometrical symmetry of the structure.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; text compacted and material adde

Photon heat transport in low-dimensional nanostructures

At low temperatures when the phonon modes are effectively frozen, photon transport is the dominating mechanism of thermal relaxation in metallic systems. Starting from a microscopic many-body Hamiltonian, we develop a nonequilibrium Green's function method to study energy transport by photons in nanostructures. A formally exact expression for the energy current between a metallic island and a one-dimensional electromagnetic field is obtained. From this expression we derive the quantized thermal conductance as well as show how the results can be generalized to nonequilibrium situations. Generally, the frequency-dependent current noise of the island electrons determines the energy transfer rate.Comment: 4 pages, 3 Fig

Thermal, electric and spin transport in superconductor/ferromagnetic-insulator structures

A ferromagnetic insulator (FI) attached to a conventional superconductor (S) changes drastically the properties of the latter. Specifically, the exchange field at the FI/S interface leads to a splitting of the superconducting density of states. If S is a superconducting film, thinner than the superconducting coherence length, the modification of the density of states occurs over the whole sample. The co-existence of the exchange splitting and superconducting correlations in S/FI structures leads to striking transport phenomena that are of interest for applications in thermoelectricity, superconducting spintronics and radiation sensors. Here we review the most recent progress in understanding the transport properties of FI/S structures by presenting a complete theoretical framework based on the quasiclassical kinetic equations. We discuss the coupling between the electronic degrees of freedom, charge, spin and energy, under non-equilibrium conditions and its manifestation in thermoelectricity and spin-dependent transport.Comment: 117 pages, 33 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1706.0824

Signatures and characterization of dominating Kerr nonlinearity between two driven systems with application to a suspended magnetic beam

We consider a model of two harmonically driven damped harmonic oscillators that are coupled linearly and with a cross-Kerr coupling. We show how to distinguish this combination of coupling types from the case where a coupling of optomechanical type is present. This can be useful for the characterization of various nonlinear systems, such as mechanical oscillators, qubits, and hybrid systems. We then consider a hybrid system with linear and cross-Kerr interactions and a relatively high damping in one of the modes. We derive a quantum Hamiltonian of a doubly clamped magnetic beam, showing that the cross-Kerr coupling is prominent there. We discuss, in the classical limit, measurements of its linear response as well as the specific higher-harmonic responses. These frequency-domain measurements can allow estimating the magnitude of the cross-Kerr coupling or its magnon population.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figure