Antiferromagnets are an important class of ordered spin systems, common in spintronic applications and providing a testbed for studying magnetism. Recently, the injection of magnons – coherent spin waves – has been explored by broadband terahertz pulses in antoferromagnets, such as MnO. Here, terahertz time-domain spectroscopy is used to detect magnon resonances in MnF2, which is a model antiferromagnet with uniaxial anisotropy and a Néel temperature of 67 K. Temperature dependence of a one-magnon resonances is examined from 5 K to 70 K. The center frequency of the one-magnon is recorded below the Néel temperature and fit to a Brillouin function. It is found that the degree of correlation between neighboring spins is j = 1.1. Namely, a weak correlation and appropriately modeled by mean-field theory befitting this simple system. From low temperature to room temperature, a two-magnon resonance is observed to broaden and strengthen as the temperature increases. Two-magnon modes arise due to zone-edge magnons being stimulated with -k and +k momenta and do not require magnetic ordering. Over this same temperature range, THz transients are used to monitor the time-of flight through the crystal, the refractive index, the internal energy and the heat capacity. Overall these quantities decrease with decreasing temperature, with behavior that falls into three regimes: a thermal dominated region above the Néel temperature, a magnetic regime below the Néel temperature; and a hyperfine interaction region at temperatures below 6 K. The latter is the first direct observation of the hyperfine interaction using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy.

Date Published: 19 April 2017
PDF: 1 pages
Proc. SPIE 10102, Ultrafast Phenomena and Nanophotonics XXI, 101020V (19 April 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2250627

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10102:
Ultrafast Phenomena and Nanophotonics XXI
Markus Betz; Abdulhakem Y. Elezzabi, Editor(s)