Tunable Magnetoacoustic Oscillator with Low Phase Noise

A frequency-tunable low-phase-noise magnetoacoustic resonator is developed on the base of a parallel plate straight-edge bilayer consisting of an yttrium-iron-garnet (YIG) layer grown on a substrate of a gallium gadolinium garnet (GGG). When a YIG-GGG sample forms an ideal parallel plate, it supports a series of high-quality-factor acoustic modes standing along the plate thickness. Due to the magnetostriction of the YIG layer the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) mode of the YIG layer can strongly interact with the acoustic thickness modes of the YIG-GGG structure, when the modes' frequencies match. A particular acoustic thickness mode used for the resonance excitations of the hybrid magnetoacoustic oscillations in a YIG-GGG bilayer is chosen by the YIG-layer FMR frequency, which can be tuned by the variation of the external bias magnetic field. A composite scheme of a magnetoacoustic oscillator, which includes a FMR-based resonance preselector, is developed to guarantee satisfaction of the Barkhausen criteria for a single-acoustic-mode oscillation regime. The developed low-phase-noise composite magnetoacoustic oscillator can be tuned from 0.84 to 1 GHz with an increment of about 4.773 MHz (frequency distance between the adjacent acoustic thickness modes in a YIG-GGG parallel plate), and demonstrates the phase noise of & minus;116 dBc/Hz at the offset frequency of 10 kHz.

Automated summary

A frequency-tunable low-phase-noise magnetoacoustic resonator is developed based on a parallel plate straight-edge bilayer consisting of a YIG layer grown on a GGG substrate. By selecting a specific acoustic thickness mode in the YIG-GGG structure and adjusting the FMR frequency of the YIG layer with an external magnetic field variation, a low-phase-noise composite magnetoacoustic oscillator can be achieved with tunable frequency range.