Superfluid spin transport through antiferromagnetic insulators

Atheoretical proposal for realizing and detecting spin supercurrent in an isotropic antiferromagnetic insulator is reported. Superfluid spin transport is achieved by inserting the antiferromagnet between two metallic reservoirs and establishing a spin accumulation in one reservoir such that a spin bias is applied across the magnet. We consider a class of bipartite antiferromagnets with Neel ground states, and temperatures well below the ordering temperature, where spin transport is mediated essentially by the condensate. Landau-Lifshitz and magnetocircuit theories are used to directly relate spin current in different parts of the heterostructure to the spin-mixing conductances characterizing the antiferromagnet vertical bar metal interfaces and the antiferromagnet bulk damping parameters, quantities all obtainable from experiments. We study the efficiency of spin angular-momentum transfer at an antiferromagnet vertical bar metal interface by developing a microscopic scattering theory for the interface and extracting the spin-mixing conductance for a simple model. Within the model, a quantitative comparison between the spin-mixing conductances obtained for the antiferromagnet vertical bar metal and ferromagnet vertical bar metal interfaces is made.