A New Spin on Antiferromagnetic Magnons

Antiferromagnetic (AFM) magnonics, long a topic of academic interest, has undergone a renaissance in recent years. The new interest in this old topic is due to scientific factors—such as the resurgent recognition that AFM spin waves can carry an arbitrarily signed spin current, unlike FMs—to practical factors—such as driving the ultrafast dynamics of AFM solitons. In this talk, I present my recent work in this field. We will focus on the rich internal structure of AFM magnons, which alternatively acts as spin, charge isospin, or optical polarization, depending on one's perspective.  We will discuss the electrical generation of these magnons by spin-transfer torque, followed by a general semiclassical theory governing the internal dynamics of the magnon current. With the general theory in hand, we will finish by touring a suite of possible applications, including THz bitrate signal generation, the skyrmion Hall effect, and future research in semiclassical quantum computing.