arXiv · 1612.01954
Increased low-temperature damping in yttrium iron garnet thin films
Abstract
We report measurements of the frequency and temperature dependence of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) for a 15-nm-thick yttrium iron garnet (YIG) film grown by off-axis sputtering. Although the FMR linewidth is narrow at room temperature (corresponding to a damping coefficient $α$ = (9.0 $\pm$ 0.2) $\times 10^{-4}$), comparable to previous results for high-quality YIG films of similar thickness, the linewidth increases strongly at low temperatures, by a factor of almost 30. This increase cannot be explained as due to two-magnon scattering from defects at the sample interfaces. We argue that the increased low-temperature linewidth is due to impurity relaxation mechanisms that have been investigated previously in bulk YIG samples. We suggest that the low-temperature linewidth is a useful figure of merit to guide the optimization of thin-film growth protocols because it is a particularly sensitive indicator of impurities.
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C. L. Jermain, S. V. Aradhya, J. T. Brangham, M. R. Page, N. D. Reynolds, P. C. Hammel, R. A. Buhrman, F. Y. Yang, D. C. Ralph. 2016-12-06. Increased low-temperature damping in yttrium iron garnet thin films. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.95.174411
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