Antiferromagnetic spin Seebeck effect across the spin-flop transition: A stochastic Ginzburg-Landau simulation

Abstract

We investigate the antiferromagnetic spin Seebeck effect across the spin-flop transition in a numerical simulation based on the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation for a bilayer of a uniaxial insulating antiferromagnet and an adjacent metal. By directly simulating the rate of change of the conduction-electron spin density ${\bf s}$ in the adjacent metal layer, we demonstrate that a sign reversal of the antiferromagnetic spin Seebeck effect across the spin-flop transition occurs when the interfacial coupling of ${\bf s}$ to the staggered magnetization ${\bf n}$ of the antiferromagnet dominates, whereas no sign reversal appears when the interfacial coupling of ${\bf s}$ to the magnetization ${\bf m}$ dominates. Moreover, we show that the sign reversal is influenced by the degree of spin dephasing in the metal layer. Our result indicates that the sign reversal is not a generic property of a simple uniaxial antiferromagnet, but controlled by microscopic details of the exchange coupling at the interface and the spin dephasing in the metal layer.