High-harmonic generation in spin and charge current pumping at ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic resonance in the presence of spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

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 $ω_0$, due to absorption of low-power microwaves of frequency $ω_0$ 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 adiabatic quantum pumping, predicts that component $I^{S_z}$ of spin current vector $\big( I^{S_x}(t),I^{S_y}(t),I^{S_z} \big) \propto ω_0$ is time-independent while $I^{S_x}(t)$ and $I^{S_y}(t)$ oscillate harmonically in time with a single frequency $ω_0$; whereas pumped charge current is zero $I \equiv 0$ in the same adiabatic $\propto ω_0$ limit. Here we employ more general than "standard model" approaches, time-dependent nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) and Floquet-NEGF, 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 $I^{S_α}(t)$ and charge $I(t)$ currents. All four of these functions harmonically oscillate in time at both even an odd integer multiples $Nω_0$ of the driving frequency $ω_0$. The cutoff order of such high-harmonics increases with SOC strength, reaching $N_\mathrm{max} \simeq 11$ in the chosen-for-demonstration one-dimensional FM or AFM models. Higher cutoff $N_\mathrm{max} \simeq 25$ can be achieved in realistic two-dimensional (2D) FM models defined on the honeycomb lattice, where we provide prescription on how to realize them using 2D magnets and their heterostructures.