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Supercurrent in a room-temperature Bose–Einstein magnon condensate

Nature Physics volume 12, pages 1057–1062 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

A supercurrent is a macroscopic effect of a phase-induced collective motion of a quantum condensate. So far, experimentally observed supercurrent phenomena such as superconductivity and superfluidity have been restricted to cryogenic temperatures. Here, we report on the discovery of a supercurrent in a Bose–Einstein magnon condensate prepared in a room-temperature ferrimagnetic film. The magnon condensate is formed in a parametrically pumped magnon gas and is subject to a thermal gradient created by local laser heating of the film. The appearance of the supercurrent, which is driven by a thermally induced phase shift in the condensate wavefunction, is evidenced by analysis of the temporal evolution of the magnon density measured by means of Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. Our findings offer opportunities for the investigation of room-temperature macroscopic quantum phenomena and their potential applications at ambient conditions.

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Figure 1: Magnon spectrum.
Figure 2: Experimental set-up.
Figure 3: Temperature-dependent temporal dynamics of the magnon BEC.
Figure 4: Temporal dynamics of the magnon BEC under local laser heating.
Figure 5: Theoretically calculated magnon dynamics in a thermal gradient.

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Acknowledgements

Financial support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (project INST 161/544-3 within the Transregional Collaborative Research Centre SFB/TR 49 ‘Condensed Matter Systems with Variable Many-Body Interactions’ and project VA 735/1-2 within the priority programme SPP 1538 ‘Spin Caloric Transport’), from EU-FET (Grant InSpin 612759) and from the State Fund for Fundamental Research of Ukraine (SFFR) is gratefully acknowledged. D.A.B. is supported by a fellowship of the Graduate School Material Sciences in Mainz (MAINZ) through DFG funding of the Excellence Initiative (GSC-266). We are also indebted to Y. Tserkovnyak, S. Eggert, A. N. Slavin, V. S. Tiberkevich, K. Nakata, D. Loss and V. L. Pokrovsky for fruitful discussions. We also acknowledge I. I. Syvorotka (Scientific Research Company ‘Carat’, Lviv, Ukraine) for supplying us with the YIG film sample.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fachbereich Physik and Landesforschungszentrum OPTIMAS, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Dmytro A. Bozhko, Alexander A. Serga, Peter Clausen, Vitaliy I. Vasyuchka, Frank Heussner & Burkard Hillebrands

  2. Graduate School Materials Science in Mainz, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Dmytro A. Bozhko

  3. Faculty of Radiophysics, Electronics and Computer Systems, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Kyiv 01601, Ukraine

    Gennadii A. Melkov

  4. Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel

    Anna Pomyalov & Victor S. L’vov

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Contributions

A.A.S. and B.H. contributed to the experimental idea, planned and supervised the project. D.A.B., P.C., V.I.V. and A.A.S. carried out the experiments. D.A.B. and P.C. contributed to the experimental set-up. D.A.B. carried out the numerical analysis. G.A.M., A.P. and V.S.L. developed the theoretical model. F.H. performed temperature simulations. All authors analysed the experimental data and discussed the results.

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Correspondence to Burkard Hillebrands.

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Bozhko, D., Serga, A., Clausen, P. et al. Supercurrent in a room-temperature Bose–Einstein magnon condensate. Nature Phys 12, 1057–1062 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3838

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