Programme :
This lecture course covers fundamental concepts of spin-dependent transport and magnetizations dynamics that enabled developments of spintronic devices aiming to explore intrinsic spin of the electron in addition to its charge. Topics range from traditional spintronic phenomena in nanostructures with collinear and noncollinear magnetization configurations to recent developments in emerging fields of spin-orbitronics and graphene spintronics (see detailed programme below).

Programme :

Lectures 1-8 (M. Chshiev) :

- Introduction

- Giant magnetoresistance :
Transport in magnetic materials. From Mott to Fert. Density of States. Diffusive transport. Electrochemical potential. Spin current. Spin accumulation. Ferro/nonmagnetic interface. Magnetic multilayers. CIP and CPP geometries.

- Spin dependent tunneling and tunnel magnetoresistance :
Magnetic tunnel junctions. Jullière, free electron and tight-binding models for electron tunneling. Spin filtering. WKB Approximation. Landauer formalism. Introduction to Green function based transport
formalism.

- Spin transfer torques and interlayer exchange coupling :
Origins of damping-like and field-like spin transfer torque components and their properties. Interlayer exchange coupling.

- Spin orbitronics :
Magnetocrystalline anisotropy, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, Rashba and Spin Hall effects, Spin-orbit torques.

- Graphene spintronics :
Spintronic phenomena in graphene-based devices in vertical and lateral geometries.

- Electronique and magnetic noise :
Auto-correlation and spectral density function. Wiener-Khintchine and Parceval theorems.


Lectures 9-12 : (O. Klein)

- Magnetization dynamics :
LLG equation, ferromagnetic resonance, Gilbert damping; spin waves; switching, thermally activated switching. Incorporation of novel torque terms; spin pumping phenomenology. Pump-probe techniques.