Intrinsic surface magnetic anisotropy in Y3Fe5O12 as the origin of low-magnetic-field behavior of the spin Seebeck effect

The magnetic-field dependence of the longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) in a Pt/Y3Fe5O12 (YIG)-slab junction system was found to deviate from a bulk magnetization curve of the YIG slab in a low field range. In this paper, we show that the deviation originates from the difference between surface and bulk magnetization processes in the YIG slab and that it appears even when removing possible extrinsic magnetic anisotropy due to surface roughness and replacing the Pt layer with different materials. This result indicates that the anomalous field dependence of the LSSE is due to an intrinsic magnetic property of the YIG surface. Our numerical calculation based on the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation shows that the deviation between the LSSE and bulk magnetization curves is qualitatively explained by introducing easy-axis perpendicular magnetic anisotropy near the surface of YIG.