Nonlocal Magnetoresistance Mediated by Spin Superfluidity

The electrical response of two diffusive metals is studied when they are linked by a magnetic insulator hosting a topologically stable (superfluid) spin current. We discuss how charge currents in the metals induce a spin supercurrent state, which in turn generates a magnetoresistance that depends on the topology of the electrical circuit. This magnetoresistance relies on phase coherence over the entire magnet and gives direct evidence for spin superfluidity. We show that driving the magnet with an ac current allows coherent spin transport even in the presence of U(1)-breaking magnetic anisotropy that can preclude dc superfluid transport. Spin transmission in the ac regime shows a series of resonance peaks as a function of frequency. The peak locations, heights, and widths can be used to extract static interfacial properties, e.g., the spin-mixing conductance and effective spin Hall angle, and to probe dynamic properties such as the spin-wave dispersion. Thus, ac transport may provide a simpler route to realizing nonequilbrium coherent spin transport and a useful way to characterize the magnetic system, serving as a precursor to the realization of dc superfluid spin transport.Comment: 4 pages; 3 figure

Quantum control of topological defects in magnetic systems

Energy-efficient classical information processing and storage based on topological defects in magnetic systems have been studied over past decade. In this work, we introduce a class of macroscopic quantum devices in which a quantum state is stored in a topological defect of a magnetic insulator. We propose non-invasive methods to coherently control and readout the quantum state using ac magnetic fields and magnetic force microscopy, respectively. This macroscopic quantum spintronic device realizes the magnetic analog of the three-level rf-SQUID qubit and is built fully out of electrical insulators with no mobile electrons, thus eliminating decoherence due to the coupling of the quantum variable to an electronic continuum and energy dissipation due to Joule heating. For a domain wall sizes of $10-100$~nm and reasonable material parameters, we estimate qubit operating temperatures in the range of $0.1-1$~K, a decoherence time of about $0.01-1$~$\mu$s, and the number of Rabi flops within the coherence time scale in the range of $10^{2}-10^{4}$.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Noise in tunneling spin current across coupled quantum spin chains

We theoretically study the spin current and its dc noise generated between two spin-1/2 spin chains weakly coupled at a single site in the presence of an over-population of spin excitations and a temperature elevation in one subsystem relative to the other, and compare the corresponding transport quantities across two weakly coupled magnetic insulators hosting magnons. In the spin chain scenario, we find that applying a temperature bias exclusively leads to a vanishing spin current and a concomitant divergence in the spin Fano factor, defined as the spin current noise-to-signal ratio. This divergence is shown to have an exact analogy to the physics of electron scattering between fractional quantum Hall edge states and not to arise in the magnon scenario. We also reveal a suppression in the spin current noise that exclusively arises in the spin chain scenario due to the fermion nature of the spin-1/2 operators. We discuss how the spin Fano factor may be extracted experimentally via the inverse spin Hall effect used extensively in spintronics.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Superfluid Spin Transport through Easy-Plane Ferromagnetic Insulators

Superfluid spin transport $-$ dissipationless transport of spin $-$ is theoretically studied in a ferromagnetic insulator with easy-plane anisotropy. We consider an open geometry where spin current is injected into the ferromagnet from one side by a metallic reservoir with a nonequilibrium spin accumulation, and ejected into another metallic reservoir located downstream. Spin transport through the device is studied using a combination of magnetoelectric circuit theory, Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert phenomenology, and microscopic linear-response theory. We discuss how spin superfluidity can be probed using a magnetically-mediated electron-drag experiment.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures (version published on Phys. Rev. Lett. and supplementary material added

Detecting Spin Transport in Quantum Magnets with Photons

A minimally invasive technique is proposed for detecting the differential spin conductance and spin current noise across a junction between two quantum magnets using a high-quality microwave resonator coupled to a transmission line which is impedance matched to a photon detector downstream. Photons in the microwave resonator couple inductively to the spins in the spin subsystem, and the noise in the junction spin current imprints itself into the output photons propagating along the transmission line. The technique is capable of extracting both the dc and finite frequency noise via the output photon flux and of measuring the junction spin conductance by driving the electromagnetic environment into a different temperature regime.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Noise due to neutral modes in the v=2/3 fractional quantum Hall state

We theoretically study charge noise generated by excited neutral modes, which impinge on the quantum point contact of a quantum Hall bar with filling fraction v=2/3. The noise is computed for thermally excited neutral modes as well as for biased neutral modes with dipole-fermion excitations. Within the dipole-fermion picture, we show that the noise arising from two colliding modes can be suppressed due to Pauli-blocking and be non-universal due to random edge disorder, but becomes universal upon disorder-averaging. The ratio of noise due to two colliding neutral modes and noise due to only one such mode is smaller for dipole-fermions than for thermal excitations, thus providing evidence for the different quantum statistics of the two types of excitations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Spin transport in an electrically-driven magnon gas near Bose-Einstein condensation: Hartree-Fock-Keldysh theory

An easy-plane ferromagnetic insulator in a uniform external magnetic field and in contact with a phonon bath and a normal metal bath is studied theoretically in the presence of dc spin current injection via the spin Hall effect in the metal. The Keldysh path integral formalism is used to model the magnon gas driven into a nonequilibrium steady state by mismatched bath temperatures and/or electrical injection, and we analyze the magnon system in the normal (uncondensed) state, but close to the instability to Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), within the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation. We find that the steady state magnon distribution function generally has a non-thermal form that cannot be described by a single effective chemical potential and effective temperature. We also show that the BEC instability in the electrically-driven magnon system is signaled by a sign change in the imaginary part of the poles for long-wavelength magnon modes and by the divergence of the nonequilibrium magnon distribution function. In the presence of two bath temperatures, we find that the correlation length of the superfluid order parameter fluctuations exhibits nontrivial finite temperature crossover behaviors that are richer than the standard crossover behaviors obtained for the vacuum-superfluid transition in an equilibrium dilute Bose gas. We study the consequences of these thermal crossovers on the magnon spin conductivity and obtain an inverse square-root divergence in the spin conductivity in the vicinity of the electrically-induced BEC instability. A spintronics device capable of testing our spin transport predictions is discussed.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, appendice

Topological spin transport by Brownian diffusion of domain walls

We propose thermally-populated domain walls (DWs) in an easy-plane ferromagnetic insulator as robust spin carriers between two metals. The chirality of a DW, which serves as a topological charge, couples to the metal spin accumulation via spin-transfer torque and results in the chirality-dependent thermal nucleation rates of DWs at the interface. After overpopulated DWs of a particular (net) chirality diffuse and leave the ferromagnet at the other interface, they reemit the spin current by spin pumping. The conservation of the topological charge supports an algebraic decay of spin transport as the length of the ferromagnet increases; this is analogous to the decaying behavior of superfluid spin transport but contrasts with the exponential decay of magnon spin transport. We envision that similar spin transport with algebraic decay may be implemented in materials with exotic spin phases by exploiting topological characteristics and the associated conserved quantities of their excitations.Comment: 5 pages + references, 4 figure

Thermally-Activated Phase Slips in Superfluid Spin Transport in Magnetic Wires

We theoretically study thermally-activated phase slips in superfluid spin transport in easy-plane magnetic wires within the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert phenomenology, which runs parallel to the Langer-Ambegaokar-McCumber-Halperin theory for thermal resistances in superconducting wires. To that end, we start by obtaining the exact solutions for free-energy minima and saddle points. We provide an analytical expression for the phase-slip rate in the zero spin-current limit, which involves detailed analysis of spin fluctuations at extrema of the free energy. An experimental setup of a magnetoeletric circuit is proposed, in which thermal phase slips can be inferred by measuring nonlocal magnetoresistance.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, and a supplemental materia

Squeezed noise due to two-level system defects in superconducting resonator circuits

Motivated by recent surprising experimental results for the noise output of superconducting microfabricated resonators used in quantum computing applications and astronomy, we develop a fully quantum theoretical model to describe quantum dynamics of these circuits. Building on theoretical techniques from quantum optics, we calculate the noise in the output voltage due to two-level system (TLS) defects. The theory predicts squeezing for the noise in the amplitude quadrature with respect to the input noise, which qualitatively reproduces the noise ellipse observed in experiment. We show that noise enhancement along the phase direction persists for pump frequencies away from resonance. Our results also suggest that intrinsic TLS fluctuations must be incorporated in the model in order to describe the experimentally observed dependence of the phase noise on input power.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure