Spin wave propagation in perpendicularly magnetized nm-thick yttrium iron garnet films

Magnonics offers a new way for information transport that uses spin waves (SWs) and is free of charge currents. Unlike Damon-Eshbach SWs, the magneto-static forward volume SWs offer the reciprocity configuration suitable for SW logic devices with low power consumption. Here, we study forward volume SW propagation in yttrium iron garnet (YIG) thin films with an ultra-low damping constant α=8×10^-5. We design different integrated microwave antenna with different k-vector excitation distributions on YIG thin films. Using a vector network analyzer, we measured SW transmission with the films magnetized in perpendicular orientation. Based on the experimental results, we extract the group velocity as well as the dispersion relation of SWs and directly compare the power efficiency of SW propagation in YIG using coplanar waveguide and micro stripline for SW excitation and detection.