“Inverse” orbital torque and “spin-to-orbital” conversion

Another recent experimental paper in which I got coauthored in 2023 is one from the group of Antonio Azevedo in Federal University of Pernambuco:

  • E. Santos, J. E. Abrão, Dongwook Go, L. K. de Assis, Y. Mokrousov, J.B.S. Mendes, A. Azevedo
    Inverse Orbital Torque via Spin-Orbital Interwined States
    Physical Review Applied 19, 014069 (2023) *Editor’s Suggestion

As far as I know, the experiment began soon after our previous work on orbital-to-spin conversion in CuOx/Pt/TmIG (experiemnt performed in Kläui-Lab in Mainz)

  • Shilei Ding, Andrew Ross, Dongwook Go, Zengyao Ren, Frank Freimuth, Sven Becker, Fabian Kammerbauer, Jinbo Yang, Gerhard Jakob, Yuriy Mokrousov, Mathias Kläui
    Harnessing non-local orbital-to-spin conversion of interfacial orbital currents for efficient spin-orbit torques
    Physical Review Letters 125, 177201 (2020)

and they asked the question on how the reciprocal process would take place. By injecting spin currents to Pt/CuOx interface (by spin pumping and spin Seebeck effect from YIG), they confirmed that the reciprocal process also exists, and qualitative features are very much alike. The experiment clearly showed that spin-to-orbital conversion occurs as much as orbital-to-spin conversion occurs. Even though this is somewhat expected in theory – the reciprocity is always guaranteed to be present in near-equilibrium transport phenomena, I was very glad to see this result and reassured, which “closed the second half of the loop” in our conceptual understanding.

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