High-harmonic generation in spin and charge current pumping at ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic resonance in the presence of spin-orbit coupling
Résumé
One of the cornerstone effects in spintronics is spin pumping by dynamical magnetization that is steadily precessing (around, e.g., the $z$-axis) with frequency $\omega_0$, due to absorption of low-power microwaves of frequency $\omega_0$ under the resonance conditions and in the absence of any applied bias voltage. The two-decades-old "standard model" of this effect, based on the scattering theory of quantum transport, predicts that component $I^{S_z}$ of spin current vector $(I^{S_x},I^{S_y},I^{S_z}) \propto \omega_0$ is time-independent while $I^{S_x}(t)$ and $I^{S_y}(t)$ oscillate harmonically in time with {\em single} frequency $\omega_0$; whereas pumped charge current is zero $I \equiv 0$ in the same adiabatic $\propto \omega_0$ limit. Here we employ more general time-dependent quantum transport formalism to predict unforeseen features of spin pumping -- precessing localized magnetic moments within ferromagnetic metal (FM) or antiferromagnetic metal (AFM), whose conduction electrons are exposed to spin-orbit coupling (SOC) of either intrinsic or proximity origin, will pump both spin $I^{S_\alpha}(t)$ and charge $I(t)$ currents. All four of these functions harmonically oscillate in time at both even an odd integer multiples $n\omega_0$ of the driving frequency $\omega_0$. Such high-harmonics are cut off at $n_\mathrm{max}$, with possibility to tune $n_\mathrm{max} \le 4$ in the chosen for demonstration one-dimensional FM or AFM models with the Rashba SOC by increasing its strength.