Damping of parametrically excited magnons in the presence of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect

Abstract: The impact of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) on the magnon damping in magnetic-insulator/nonmagnetic-metal bilayers was recently discussed in several reports. However, results of those experiments can be blurred by multimode excitation within the measured linewidth. In order to avoid possible intermodal interference, we investigated the damping of a single magnon group in a platinum covered Yttrium Iron Garnet (YIG) film by measurement of the threshold of its parametric excitation. Both dipolar and exchange spin-wave branches were probed. It turned out that the LSSE-related modification of spin-wave damping in a micrometer-thick YIG film is too weak to be observed in the entire range of experimentally accessible wavevectors. At the same time, the change in the mean temperature of the YIG layer, which can appear by applying a temperature gradient, strongly modifies the damping value.