Nanoscale Magnonic Neurons

Abstract: We use micromagnetic simulations to demonstrate neuron functionality of two-dimensional (2D) chiral magnonic resonators. Our design exploits nonlinear resonant scattering of spin waves propagating in a YIG medium from an edge mode of a permalloy nano-element. The reduced frequency and volume of the edge mode facilitate matching it to the YIG modes and give rise to their wide-angle scattering. As the amplitudes of the incident spin waves increase, the edge mode exhibits a positive nonlinear frequency shift. This shift leads to a complex frequency-dependent nonlinear variation of the amplitude and phase of spin waves scattered in different directions. We show that the scattered waves are strong enough to activate secondary neurons. This provides the connectivity required for combining our proposed neurons into 2D magnonic neural networks.