Knowledge about the magnetic and electronic properties of materials does not only expand our fundamental understanding of nature, but is also crucial for the development of new technologies. Today’s electronic devices rely on electrical currents to transport and process information, which generate a lot of heat waste via Joule heating. These devices could become much more energy efficient by using the electron’s spin or valley degree of freedom to encode information, rather than its charge. In this dissertation we study the elementary excitations of magnetic and semiconducting materials, called spin waves and excitons, which have been proposed as respectively spin and valley information carriers in future electronic devices...@en

Quantum sensing has developed into a main branch of quantum science and technology. It aims at measuring physical quantities with high resolution, sensitivity, and dynamic range. Electron spins in diamond are powerful magnetic field sensors, but their sensitivity in the microwave regime is limited to a narrow band around their resonance frequency. Here, we realize broadband microwave detection using spins in diamond interfaced with a thin-film magnet. A pump field locally converts target microwave signals to the sensor-spin frequency via the non-linear spin-wave dynamics of the magnet. Two complementary conversion protocols enable sensing and high-fidelity spin control over a gigahertz bandwidth, allowing characterization of the spin-wave band at multiple gigahertz above the sensor-spin frequency. The pump-tunable, hybrid diamond-magnet sensor chip opens the way for spin-based gigahertz material characterizations at small magnetic bias fields.

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Magnonics addresses the physical properties of spin waves and utilizes them for data processing. Scalability down to atomic dimensions, operation in the GHz-to-THz frequency range, utilization of nonlinear and nonreciprocal phenomena, and compatibility with CMOS are just a few of many advantages offered by magnons. Although magnonics is still primarily positioned in the academic domain, the scientific and technological challenges of the field are being extensively investigated, and many proof-of-concept prototypes have already been realized in laboratories. This roadmap is a product of the collective work of many authors, which covers versatile spin-wave computing approaches, conceptual building blocks, and underlying physical phenomena. In particular, the roadmap discusses the computation operations with the Boolean digital data, unconventional approaches, such as neuromorphic computing, and the progress toward magnon-based quantum computing. This article is organized as a collection of sub-sections grouped into seven large thematic sections. Each sub-section is prepared by one or a group of authors and concludes with a brief description of current challenges and the outlook of further development for each research direction.

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Nitrogen-vacancy (NV) magnetometry is a new technique for imaging spin waves in magnetic materials. It detects spin waves by their microwave magnetic stray fields, which decay evanescently on the scale of the spin-wavelength. Here, we use nanoscale control of a single-NV sensor as a wavelength filter to characterize frequency-degenerate spin waves excited by a microstrip in a thin-film magnetic insulator. With the NV probe in contact with the magnet, we observe an incoherent mixture of thermal and microwave-driven spin waves. By retracting the tip, we progressively suppress the small-wavelength modes until a single coherent mode emerges from the mixture. In-contact scans at low drive power surprisingly show occupation of the entire isofrequency contour of the two-dimensional spin-wave dispersion despite our one-dimensional microstrip geometry. Our distance-tunable filter sheds light on the spin-wave band occupation under microwave excitation and opens opportunities for imaging magnon condensates and other coherent spin-wave modes.

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Yttrium iron garnet (YIG) is a magnetic insulator with record-low damping, allowing spin-wave transport over macroscopic distances. Doping YIG with gallium ions greatly reduces the demagnetizing field and introduces a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, which leads to an isotropic spin-wave dispersion that facilitates spin-wave optics and spin-wave steering. Here, we characterize the dispersion of a gallium-doped YIG (Ga:YIG) thin film using electrical spectroscopy. We determine the magnetic anisotropy parameters and Gilbert damping from the frequency and linewidth of the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR). Next, we use propagating spin wave spectroscopy in the Damon-Eshbach configuration to detect the small spin-wave magnetic fields of this ultrathin weak magnet over a wide range of wavevectors, enabling the extraction of the exchange constant α ex = 1.3 2 × 10 - 12 J / m. We observe foldover of the FMR with increasing drive power, leading to frequency shifts of the spin-wave modes and a bistable region in the spin-wave spectra. Our results shed light on isotropic spin-wave transport in Ga:YIG and highlight the potential of electrical spectroscopy to map out the dispersion and bistability of propagating spin waves in magnets with a low saturation magnetization.

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Scattering experiments have revolutionized our understanding of nature. Examples include the discovery of the nucleus [R. G. Newton, Scattering Theory of Waves and Particles (1982)], crystallography [U. Pietsch, V. Holý, T. Baumback, High-Resolution X-Ray Scattering (2004)], and the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA [J. D. Watson, F. H. C. Crick, Nature 171, 737–738]. Scattering techniques differ by the type of particles used, the interaction these particles have with target materials, and the range of wavelengths used. Here, we demonstrate a two-dimensional table-top scattering platform for exploring magnetic properties of materials on mesoscopic length scales. Long-lived, coherent magnonic excitations are generated in a thin film of yttrium iron garnet and scattered off a magnetic target deposited on its surface. The scattered waves are then recorded using a scanning nitrogen vacancy center magnetometer that allows subwavelength imaging and operation under conditions ranging from cryogenic to ambient environment. While most scattering platforms measure only the intensity of the scattered waves, our imaging method allows for spatial determination of both amplitude and phase of the scattered waves, thereby allowing for a systematic reconstruction of the target scattering potential. Our experimental results are consistent with theoretical predictions for such a geometry and reveal several unusual features of the magnetic response of the target, including suppression near the target edges and a gradient in the direction perpendicular to the direction of surface wave propagation. Our results establish magnon scattering experiments as a platform for studying correlated many-body systems.

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Controlling magnon densities in magnetic materials enables driving spin transport in magnonic devices. We demonstrate the creation of large, out-of-equilibrium magnon densities in a thin-film magnetic insulator via microwave excitation of coherent spin waves and subsequent multimagnon scattering. We image both the coherent spin waves and the resulting incoherent magnon gas using scanning-probe magnetometry based on electron spins in diamond. We find that the gas extends unidirectionally over hundreds of micrometers from the excitation stripline. Surprisingly, the gas density far exceeds that expected for a boson system following a Bose-Einstein distribution with a maximum value of the chemical potential. We characterize the momentum distribution of the gas by measuring the nanoscale spatial decay of the magnetic stray fields. Our results show that driving coherent spin waves leads to a strong out-of-equilibrium occupation of the spin-wave band, opening new possibilities for controlling spin transport and magnetic dynamics in target directions.

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Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) monolayers are two-dimensional semiconductors with two valleys in their band structure that can be selectively addressed using circularly polarized light. Their photoluminescence spectrum is characterized by neutral and charged excitons (trions) that form a chemical equilibrium governed by the net charge density. Here, we use chemical doping to drive the conversion of excitons into trions in WS ₂ monolayers at room temperature, and study the resulting valley polarization via photoluminescence measurements under valley-selective optical excitation. We show that the doping causes the emission to become dominated by trions with a strong valley polarization associated with rapid non-radiative recombination. Simultaneously, the doping results in strongly quenched but highly valley-polarized exciton emission due to the enhanced conversion into trions. A rate equation model explains the observed valley polarization in terms of the doping-controlled exciton-trion equilibrium. Our results shed light on the important role of exciton-trion conversion on valley polarization in monolayer TMDs.

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Spin waves-the elementary excitations of magnetic materials-are prime candidate signal carriers for low-dissipation information processing. Being able to image coherent spin-wave transport is crucial for developing interference-based spin-wave devices. We introduce magnetic resonance imaging of the microwave magnetic stray fields that are generated by spin waves as a new approach for imaging coherent spin-wave transport. We realize this approach using a dense layer of electronic sensor spins in a diamond chip, which combines the ability to detect small magnetic fields with a sensitivity to their polarization. Focusing on a thin-film magnetic insulator, we quantify spin-wave amplitudes, visualize spin-wave dispersion and interference, and demonstrate time-domain measurements of spin-wave packets. We theoretically explain the observed anisotropic spin-wave patterns in terms of chiral spin-wave excitation and stray-field coupling to the sensor spins. Our results pave the way for probing spin waves in atomically thin magnets, even when embedded between opaque materials.

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