We use a pure spin current originating from the spin Hall effect to generate a spin-orbit torque strongly reducing the effective damping in an adjacent ferromagnet. Because of additional microwave excitation, large spin-wave amplitudes are achieved exceeding the threshold for four-magnon scattering, thus resulting in additional spin-wave signals at discrete frequencies. Two or more modes are generated below and above the directly pumped mode with equal frequency spacing. It is shown how this nonlinear process can be controlled in magnonic waveguides by the applied dc current and the microwave pumping power. The sudden onset of the nonlinear effect after exceeding the thresholds can be interpreted as a spiking phenomenon, which makes the effect potentially interesting for neuromorphic computing applications. Moreover, we investigated this effect under microwave frequency and external field variation. The appearance of the additional modes was investigated in the time domain, revealing a time delay between the directly excited and the simultaneously generated nonlinear modes. Furthermore, spatially resolved measurements show different spatial decay lengths of the directly pumped mode and nonlinear modes.

• Received 10 April 2023
• Revised 24 May 2023
• Accepted 16 June 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.20.014062

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.

Published by the American Physical Society