Tunable magnetic vortex dynamics

Magnetic vortices are fundamental topologically protected magnetic structures which have evolved into a large and intense field of research and hold promise for future technological applications. The fundamental frequency of the magnetic vortex in a disk is directly proportional to the magnitude of the local saturation magnetization and individual sample design resulting in a single vortex precession frequency. Commercial applications like RF oscillators in wireless transmitters and receivers, however, require tuning of the output frequency by external parameters, such as applied fields or spin-polarized currents. It is shown here that the limited tunability of a magnetic vortex in a permalloy disk can be lifted when submitted to local chromium ion implantation by introducing areas in the disk with different saturation magnetization. A static magnetic field is applied to displace the vortex core between these two regions to enable detection of different frequencies corresponding to the respective regions. This realization of multiple resonance frequencies in one and the same magnetic disk is shown experimentally via electrical detection exploiting anisotropic magnetoresistance effects and the results are supported by micromagnetic simulations. In the experiments presented here, the gyrotropic mode is excited at resonance with spin-polarized alternating currents. Systematic investigations (in terms of excitation amplitude, external static field amplitude, angle between static field and current) on the disks without chromium ion implantation clearly indicate that the vortex core is driven by a combination of Oersted field and spin-torque. These measurements also help to identify the linear and non-linear regions of vortex dynamics electrically on single disks. The results shown in this work pave the way for enabling highly tuneable wireless transmitters and receivers based on magnetic vortex structures