Spin-wave propagation in cubic anisotropic materials

The information carrier of modern technologies is the electron charge, whose transport inevitably generates Joule heating. Spin waves, the collective precessional motion of electron spins, do not involve moving charges and thus avoid Joule heating. In this respect, magnonic devices in which the information is carried by spin waves attract interest for low-power computing. However, implementation of magnonic devices for practical use suffers from a low spin-wave signal and on/off ratio. Here, we demonstrate that cubic anisotropic materials can enhance spin-wave signals by improving spin-wave amplitude as well as group velocity and attenuation length. Furthermore, cubic anisotropic materials show an enhanced on/off ratio through a laterally localized edge mode, which closely mimics the gate-controlled conducting channel in traditional field-effect transistors. These attractive features of cubic anisotropic materials will invigorate magnonics research towards wave-based functional devices.