Dynamic self-organisation and pattern formation by magnon-polarons

Magnetic materials play a vital role in energy-efficient data storage technologies, combining very fast switching with long-term retention of information. However, it has been shown that, at very short time scales, magnetisation dynamics become chaotic due to internal instabilities, resulting in incoherent spin-wave excitations that ultimately destroy magnetic ordering. Here, contrary to expectations, we show that such chaos gives rise to a periodic pattern of reversed magnetic domains, with a feature size far smaller than the spatial extent of the excitation. We explain this pattern as a result of phase-synchronisation of magnon-polaron quasiparticles, driven by strong coupling of magnetic and elastic modes. Our results reveal not only the peculiar formation and evolution of magnon-polarons at short time-scales, but also present an alternative mechanism of magnetisation reversal driven by coherent packets of short-wavelength magnetoelastic waves.

M. Gidding, T. Janssen, C. S. Davies, A. Kirilyuk