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The recent development of hybrid systems based on superconducting circuits provides the possibility of engineering quantum sensors that exploit different degrees of freedom. Quantum magnonics, which aims to control and read out quanta of collective spin excitations in magnetically ordered systems, provides opportunities for advances in both the study of magnetism and the development of quantum technologies. Using a superconducting qubit as a quantum sensor, we report the detection of a single magnon in a millimeter-sized ferrimagnetic crystal with a quantum efficiency of up to 0.71. The detection is based on the entanglement between a magnetostatic mode and the qubit, followed by a single-shot measurement of the qubit state. This proof-of-principle experiment establishes the single-photon detector counterpart for magnonics.

We present a scheme to entangle two magnon modes in a cavity magnomechanical system. The two magnon modes are embodied by collective motions of a large number of spins in two macroscopic ferrimagnets, and couple to a single microwave cavity mode via magnetic dipole interaction. We show that by activating the nonlinear magnetostrictive interaction in one ferrimagnet, realized by driving the magnon mode with a strong red-detuned microwave field, the two magnon modes can be prepared in an entangled state. The entanglement is achieved by exploiting the nonlinear magnon-phonon coupling and the linear magnon-cavity coupling, and is in the steady state and robust against temperature. The entangled magnon modes in two massive ferrimagnets represent genuinely macroscopic quantum states, and may find applications in the study of macroscopic quantum mechanics and quantum information processing based on magnonics.

Spintronics is a research field that aims to understand and control spins on the nanoscale and should enable next-generation data storage and manipulation. One technological and scientific key challenge is to stabilize small spin textures and to move them efficiently with high velocities. For a long time, research focused on ferromagnetic materials, but ferromagnets show fundamental limits for speed and size. Here, we circumvent these limits using compensated ferrimagnets. Using ferrimagnetic Pt/Gd44Co56/TaOx films with a sizeable Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction, we realize a current-driven domain wall motion with a speed of 1.3 km s–1 near the angular momentum compensation temperature (TA) and room-temperature-stable skyrmions with minimum diameters close to 10 nm near the magnetic compensation temperature (TM). Both the size and dynamics of the ferrimagnet are in excellent agreement with a simplified effective ferromagnet theory. Our work shows that high-speed, high-density spintronics devices based on current-driven spin textures can be realized using materials in which TA and TM are close together.

The magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) has been intensively studied in a variety of ferro- and ferrimagnetic materials as a powerful probe for electronic and magnetic properties1–3 and for magneto-optical technologies4. The MOKE can be additionally useful for the investigation of the antiferromagnetic (AF) state, although thus far limited to insulators5–9. Here, we report the first observation of the MOKE in an AF metal. In particular, we find that the non-collinear AF metal Mn3Sn (ref. 10) exhibits a large zero-field Kerr rotation angle of 20 mdeg at room temperature, comparable to ferromagnetic metals. Our first-principles calculations clarify that ferroic ordering of magnetic octupoles11 produces a large MOKE even in its fully compensated AF state. This large MOKE further allows imaging of the magnetic octupole domains and their reversal. The observation of a large MOKE in an AF metal will open new avenues for the study of domain dynamics as well as spintronics using antiferromagnets12–16.

Magnetic skyrmions are swirling magnetic textures with novel characteristics suitable for future spintronic and topological applications. Recent studies confirmed the room-temperature stabilization of skyrmions in ultrathin ferromagnets. However, such ferromagnetic skyrmions show an undesirable topological effect, the skyrmion Hall effect, which leads to their current-driven motion towards device edges, where skyrmions could easily be annihilated by topographic defects. Recent theoretical studies have predicted enhanced current-driven behavior for antiferromagnetically exchange-coupled skyrmions. Here we present the stabilization of these skyrmions and their current-driven dynamics in ferrimagnetic GdFeCo films. By utilizing element-specific X-ray imaging, we find that the skyrmions in the Gd and FeCo sublayers are antiferromagnetically exchange-coupled. We further confirm that ferrimagnetic skyrmions can move at a velocity of ~50 m s −1 with reduced skyrmion Hall angle, | θ SkHE | ~ 20°. Our findings open the door to ferrimagnetic and antiferromagnetic skyrmionics while providing key experimental evidences of recent theoretical studies. Non-zero topological charge prevents the straight motion of ferromagnetic skyrmions and hinders their applications. Here, the authors report the stabilization and current-driven dynamics of skyrmions in GdFeCo films in which the ferrimagnetic skyrmions can move with high velocity and reduced skyrmion Hall angle.

Strain engineering is widely used to manipulate the electronic and magnetic properties of complex materials. For example, the piezomagnetic effect provides an attractive route to control magnetism with strain. In this effect, the staggered spin structure of an antiferromagnet is decompensated by breaking the crystal field symmetry, which induces a ferrimagnetic polarization. Piezomagnetism is especially appealing because, unlike magnetostriction, it couples strain and magnetization at linear order, and allows for bi-directional control suitable for memory and spintronics applications. However, its use in functional devices has so far been hindered by the slow speed and large uniaxial strains required. Here we show that the essential features of piezomagnetism can be reproduced with optical phonons alone, which can be driven by light to large amplitudes without changing the volume and hence beyond the elastic limits of the material. We exploit nonlinear, three-phonon mixing to induce the desired crystal field distortions in the antiferromagnet CoF 2 . Through this effect, we generate a ferrimagnetic moment of 0.2 μ B per unit cell, nearly three orders of magnitude larger than achieved with mechanical strain. This paper shows how lattice distortions induced by a laser pulse can create a ferrimagnetic moment in an antiferromagnet. This mechanism gives a magnetic response that is orders of magnitude larger than using mechanical strain.

Fast field-driven antiferromagnetic spin dynamics is realized in ferrimagnetic Gd 23 Fe 67.4 Co 9.6 thin films at the angular momentum compensation point. In particular, at this point, the field-driven domain wall mobility is found to be enhanced. Antiferromagnetic spintronics is an emerging research field which aims to utilize antiferromagnets as core elements in spintronic devices 1 , 2 . A central motivation towards this direction is that antiferromagnetic spin dynamics is expected to be much faster than its ferromagnetic counterpart 3 . Recent theories indeed predicted faster dynamics of antiferromagnetic domain walls (DWs) than ferromagnetic DWs 4 , 5 , 6 . However, experimental investigations of antiferromagnetic spin dynamics have remained unexplored, mainly because of the magnetic field immunity of antiferromagnets 7 . Here we show that fast field-driven antiferromagnetic spin dynamics is realized in ferrimagnets at the angular momentum compensation point T A . Using rare earth–3d-transition metal ferrimagnetic compounds where net magnetic moment is nonzero at T A , the field-driven DW mobility is remarkably enhanced up to 20 km s −1  T −1 . The collective coordinate approach generalized for ferrimagnets 8 and atomistic spin model simulations 6 , 9 show that this remarkable enhancement is a consequence of antiferromagnetic spin dynamics at T A . Our finding allows us to investigate the physics of antiferromagnetic spin dynamics and highlights the importance of tuning of the angular momentum compensation point of ferrimagnets, which could be a key towards ferrimagnetic spintronics.

Recent reports of current-induced switching of ferrimagnetic oxides coupled to heavy metals have opened prospects for implementing magnetic insulators into electrically addressable devices. However, the configuration and dynamics of magnetic domain walls driven by electrical currents in insulating oxides remain unexplored. Here we investigate the internal structure of the domain walls in Tm 3 Fe 5 O 12 (TmIG) and TmIG/Pt bilayers, and demonstrate their efficient manipulation by spin–orbit torques with velocities of up to 400 ms −1 and minimal current threshold for domain wall flow of 5 × 10 6  A cm −2 . Domain wall racetracks are defined by Pt current lines on continuous TmIG films, which allows for patterning the magnetic landscape of TmIG in a fast and reversible way. Scanning nitrogen-vacancy magnetometry reveals that the domain walls of TmIG thin films grown on Gd 3 Sc 2 Ga 3 O 12 exhibit left-handed Néel chirality, changing to an intermediate Néel–Bloch configuration upon Pt deposition. These results indicate the presence of interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction in magnetic garnets, opening the possibility to stabilize chiral spin textures in centrosymmetric magnetic insulators. Fast and low-power electrical control of magnetic textures is expected to enable a new generation of computational devices. Here the authors show how chiral interactions determine the structure of domain walls in Tm 3 Fe 5 O 12 and lead to efficient current-driven wall motion.

Understanding the transfer of spin angular momentum is essential in modern magnetism research. A model case is the generation of magnons in magnetic insulators by heating an adjacent metal film. Here, we reveal the initial steps of this spin Seebeck effect with <27 fs time resolution using terahertz spectroscopy on bilayers of ferrimagnetic yttrium iron garnet and platinum. Upon exciting the metal with an infrared laser pulse, a spin Seebeck current j s arises on the same ~100 fs time scale on which the metal electrons thermalize. This observation highlights that efficient spin transfer critically relies on carrier multiplication and is driven by conduction electrons scattering off the metal–insulator interface. Analytical modeling shows that the electrons’ dynamics are almost instantaneously imprinted onto j s because their spins have a correlation time of only ~4 fs and deflect the ferrimagnetic moments without inertia. Applications in material characterization, interface probing, spin-noise spectroscopy and terahertz spin pumping emerge. Probing spin pumping in the terahertz regime allows one to reveal its initial elementary steps. Here, the authors show that the formation of the spin Seebeck current in YIG/Pt critically relies on hot thermalized metal electrons because they impinge on the metal-insulator interface with maximum noise.

Symmetry breaking is a fundamental concept that prevails in many branches of physics1–5. In magnetic materials, broken inversion symmetry induces the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (DMI), which results in fascinating physical behaviours6–14 with the potential for application in future spintronic devices15–17. Here, we report the observation of a bulk DMI in GdFeCo amorphous ferrimagnets. The DMI is found to increase linearly with an increasing thickness of the ferrimagnetic layer, which is a clear signature of the bulk nature of DMI. We also found that the DMI is independent of the interface between the heavy metal and ferrimagnetic layer. This bulk DMI is attributed to an asymmetric distribution of the elemental content in the GdFeCo layer, with spatial inversion symmetry broken throughout the layer. We expect that our experimental identification of a bulk DMI will open up additional possibilities to exploit this interaction in a wide range of materials.A composition gradient is found to provide the necessary structural inversion asymmetry for a bulk Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction to manifest itself.