Shulei Zhang (CWRU)

Date: Fri. May 9th, 2025, 12:45 pm-1:45 pm
Location: Foldy room (Rock 221) & Zoom

Magnons at Work: Symmetry-Governed Spin-Charge Transport in Magnetic Materials

Shulei Zhang

Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University

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Magnons—collective spin excitations—act as low-dissipation carriers of spin information in magnetic systems. Spin-charge interconversion arises when magnons interact with conduction electrons via bulk and/or interfacial exchange coupling, enabling the transfer of both momentum and angular momentum; this coupling allows magnons to mediate not only spin but also charge transport in conducting magnetic systems, providing a transport-based probe of magnetic excitations. Such magnon-mediated transport can be shaped by symmetry constraints and magnetic configurations, enabling versatile control over both the direction and magnitude of current flow. This talk explores these effects in several magnetic systems of interest, including bulk and layered ferromagnets lacking inversion symmetry and recently discovered collinear altermagnets, a new class of magnetic materials that exhibit symmetry-protected spin-split bands despite having zero net magnetization, at variance with conventional collinear antiferromagnets.