Elastically driven ferromagnetic resonance in nickel thin films

Due to magneto-elastic coupling, magnetic degrees of freedom are influenced by elastic deformation. We here demonstrate that the magneto-elastic interaction of a radio frequency (RF) surface acoustic wave (SAW) with a ferromagnetic thin film enables an all-elastic excitation and detection of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR). We have measured the SAW magneto-transmission at room temperature in Ni/LiNbO$_3$ hybrid devices as a function of SAW frequency, external magnetic field magnitude and orientation. Our data are consistently described by a modified Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert approach [1], in which the magnetization precession is not driven by a conventional, external RF magnetic field, but rather by a purely virtual, internal tickle field stemming from RF magneto-elastic interactions. This causes a distinct magnetic field orientation dependence of elastically driven FMR, which we observe in both simulations and experiment. \newline This work is financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft via project GO 944/3-1, SFB 631, and the excellence cluster Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM). \newline [1] M. Weiler \textit{et al.} arXiv:1009.5798