Spin current through antiferromagnetic insulators

Since spin precession in an antiferromagnet can reach at the frequency regime of terahertz, recently tunable THz spin oscillator based on antiferromagnet has been proposed which is expected to be much faster than today’s signal processor. Moreover, antiferromagnet has no stray field and is hard to be influenced by the external magnetic field, which is good for the stability of the electronic devices. Due to lots of advantages, antiferromagnet is attracting much interest.In this talk, I will introduce the progress on the emerging antiferromagnetic spintronics. Particularly, I will show enhancement of thermal spin current through a thin antiferromagnetic layer [1]. Spin current phenomena near the magnetic phase transition has been observed. The important role of antiferromagnetic fluctuation on spin current has been discussed. [1] W. Lin and C. L. Chien. (Submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett.)