Snell's Law for Spin Waves

Johannes Stigloher, Martin Decker, Helmut S. Körner, Kenji Tanabe, Takahiro Moriyama, Takuya Taniguchi, Hiroshi Hata, Marco Madami, Gianluca Gubbiotti, Kensuke Kobayashi, Teruo Ono, Christian H. Back

Published 2016-06-09Version 1

We report the experimental observation of Snell's law for magneto-static spin waves in thin ferromagnetic Permalloy films by imaging incident, refracted and reflected waves. We use a thickness step as the interface between two media with different dispersion relation. Since the dispersion relation for magneto-static waves in thin ferromagnetic films is anisotropic, deviations from the isotropic Snell's law known in optics are observed for incidence angles larger than 25\textdegree{} with respect to the interface normal between the two magnetic media. Furthermore, we can show that the thickness step modifies the wavelength and the amplitude of the incident waves. Our findings open up a new way of spin wave steering for magnonic applications.