Coherent gate operation (control over on, off and duration of the magnon-photon interaction) has been a long sought-after goal in hybrid magnonic systems. In principle, this can be achieved by rapid tuning of energy levels between the photon and magnon. However, such tuning has depended on changing the geometric configuration of the device. That typically requires much longer than the magnon lifetime—on the order of 100 nanoseconds (one-hundred billionths of a second). This lack of a rapid tuning mechanism for interacting magnons and photons has made it impossible to achieve any real-time gating control. Using a novel method involving energy-level tuning, our team was able to rapidly switch between magnonic and photonic states over a period shorter than the magnon or photon lifetimes. This period is a mere 10 to 100 nanoseconds.
This work is highlighted by Phys.org and Department of Energy.
More information: Jing Xu et al, Coherent Gate Operations in Hybrid Magnonics, Physical Review Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.207202