Magnon spintronics

Magnon spintronics is the field of spintronics concerned with structures, devices and circuits that use spin currents carried by magnons. Magnons are the quanta of spin waves: the dynamic eigen-excitations of a magnetically ordered body. Analogous to electric currents, magnon-based currents can be used to carry, transport and process information. The use of magnons allows the implementation of novel wave-based computing technologies free from the drawbacks inherent to modern electronics, such as dissipation of energy due to Ohmic losses. Logic circuits based on wave interference and nonlinear wave interaction can be designed with much smaller footprints compared with conventional electron-based logic circuits. In this review, after an introduction into the basic properties of magnons and their handling, we discuss the inter-conversion between magnon currents and electron-carried spin and charge currents; and concepts and experimental studies of magnon-based computing circuits.