Research areas

Spintronics studies the flow and conversion of the spin and charge degrees of freedom, with particular emphasis on technological applications. Spintronics has recently been generalized to include other spin-conversion phenomena, such as heat currents ("spin caloritronics"), mechanical ("spin mechatronics"), and optical variables ("Spin cavitronics").

These areas of knowledge gather the interest of condensed-matter physicists, engineers, and chemists because the manipulation of the spin using, for example, electric currents, voltages, or heat currents, can allow very efficient memory recording and reading processes, as well as wave emissions in the GHz domain. From the fundamental point of view, the available data of the fruitful experimental research teams of this area motivates the quest for a new conceptual and mathematical understanding of the nanoscale processes involving angular momentum flow.

Spin-Orbit-coupled systems

Spintronics is about the coupling between charge and spin degrees of freedom. Heavy atoms, such as the rare earths, naturally exhibit such interaction via their Spin-Orbit Interaction (SOI). We have focused on understanding how the SOI of rare earths gives rise to new spintronic effects, with particular emphasis on applications.

Voltage-induced control of magnetism

The manipulation of the magnetization usually involves alternating magnetic fields and charge currents. The first ones are generally not localized, and then they are a limitation to the miniaturization of computational units. In the case of charge currents, they come with the so undesirable Joule heating that increases the temperature and energy consumption and decreases the signal-to-noise ratio. The control of magnetism by voltages in insulating structures (i.e., without electric currents) is promising because it is a localized and low-energy alternative to magnetic fields and currents.

Magnetization dynamics and instabilities

My interest focuses on magnetic systems modeling, in the continuum and classical approach of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation and its generalizations. This family of nonlinear models has similarities to other systems (nonlinear oscillator with small injection and dissipation of energy), but also offers unique properties such as chiral coupling, spatiotemporal modulation of anisotropies, among others. The possible technological application of nonlinear magnetization dynamics of one and several devices is an additional motivation in this area of research.