Chiral Emission of Exchange Spin Waves by Magnetic Skyrmions

Spin waves or their quanta magnons raise the prospect to act as information carriers in the absence of Joule heating. The challenge to excite spin waves with nanoscale wavelengths free of nanolithography becomes a critical bottleneck for the application of nanomagnonics. Magnetic skyrmions are chiral magnetic textures at the nanoscale. In this work, short-wavelength exchange spin waves are demonstrated to be chirally emitted in a low damping magnetic insulating thin film by magnetic skyrmions. The spin-wave chirality originates from the chiral spin pumping effect and is determined by the cross product of the magnetization orientation and the film normal direction. The Halbach effect explains the enhancement or attenuation of the spin-wave amplitude with a reversed sign of the Dyzaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Controllable spin-wave propagation is demonstrated by rotating a moderate applied field. Our findings are key for building compact low-power nanomagnonic devices based on intrinsic nanoscale magnetic textures.