Synthetic Altermagnetism Beyond the Crystal Limit

Abstract

Altermagnetic magnons in crystalline materials exhibit momentum-dependent splitting whose nodal structure and chiral character are governed by the point-group symmetry of the magnetic sublattice rotation. Here, we demonstrate the first synthetic realization of altermagnetic magnonics in a continuum platform composed of antiferromagnetically coupled ferromagnetic films with alternating in-plane exchange anisotropies, showing that the key signatures of altermagnetic magnonics emerge beyond the crystalline setting. Solving the linearized Landau-Lifshitz equation within a dipole-exchange framework, we show that this architecture reproduces the characteristic momentum-dependent splitting, nodal directions, and anisotropic isofrequency contours of A-type altermagnets. Long-range dipolar interactions qualitatively reconstruct this exchange-driven spectrum by lifting the nominal nodal degeneracy, hybridizing opposite-chirality modes, and producing a finite, thickness-dependent wave-vector splitting along directions that are nodal in the exchange-only limit. Extending the bilayer to finite multilayers reveals that synthetic altermagnetism undergoes a parity-dependent reconstruction that separates surface and bulk altermagnetic excitations. These results establish altermagnetic magnon phenomenology as an engineerable collective response of dipole-exchange multilayers beyond microscopic crystal symmetries.