Influence of non-local damping on magnon properties of ferromagnets

Abstract

We study the influence of non-local damping on magnon properties of Fe, Co, Ni and Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$ ($x=30\%,50\%$) alloys. The Gilbert damping parameter is typically considered as a local scalar both in experiment and in theoretical modelling. However, recent works have revealed that Gilbert damping is a non-local quantity that allows for energy dissipation between atomic sites. With the Gilbert damping parameters calculated from a state-of-the-art real-space electronic structure method, magnon lifetimes are evaluated from spin dynamics and linear response, where a good agreement is found between these two methods. It is found that non-local damping affects the magnon lifetimes in different ways depending on the system. Specifically, we find that in Fe, Co, and Ni the non-local damping decreases the magnon lifetimes, while in $\rm Fe_{70}Co_{30}$ and Fe$_{50}$Co$_{50}$ an opposite, non-local damping effect is observed, and our data show that it is much stronger in the former.