Microfocused Brillouin light scattering (BLS) and microwave absorption (MA) are used to study magnonphoton coupling in a system consisting of a split-ring microwave resonator and a yttrium iron garnet (YIG) film. The split-ring resonantor is defined by optical lithography and loaded with a 1 µm-thick YIG film grown by liquid phase epitaxy. BLS and MA spectra of the hybrid system are simultaneously recorded as a function of the applied magnetic field magnitude and microwave excitation frequency. Strong coupling of the magnon and photon modes is found with a coupling strength of g eff /2π = 63 MHz. The combined BLS and MA data allows to study the continuous transition of the hybridized modes from a purely magnonic to a purely photonic mode by varying the applied magnetic field and microwave frequency. Furthermore, the BLS data represent an up-conversion of the microwave frequency coupling to optical frequencies.The interaction between light and magnetic matter is of long-standing and fundamental interest. In recent years, the coupling of elementary excitations of the light field (photons) to those of the spin system (magnons) regained interest due to potential applications in quantum information processing.1-3 For example, hybrid quantum system are discussed as potential candidates for the upand down-conversion of quantum signals from the optical to the microwave domain and vice versa. One way of interfacing the microwave regime is to magnetically dipole couple the spin ensemble to a microwave resonator.
4-8The prerequisite for information transfer on the quantum level is to realize a large coupling strength exceeding the loss rates of the subsytems, 4,7,9 here, the microwave resonator and the spin ensemble. Since the coupling rate is proportional to the square root of the number of participating spins 4,10 ferromagnets with a high spin density are ideal for the creation of strongly coupled, hybridized magnon-photon modes.
10,11Recently, magnon-photon coupling has been investigated in several experiments where a microwave cavity was loaded with yttrium iron garnet (YIG) and the microwave transmission and/or reflection was measured as a function of the applied magnetic field.4-7 Furthermore, spin pumping in combination with the dc inverse spin Hall effect has been employed as a detection scheme for sensing the magnonic part of magnon-photon polaritons in magnetic thin film heterostructures, 6,8 which is effectively a down-conversion of the coupling to dc.Here, we report on the up-conversion of the strong coupling of photons in a micropatterned microwave splitring resonator 12,13 (SRR) and a YIG film to optical frequencies. In particular, we use Brillouin light scattera) Electronic mail: stefan.klingler@wmi.badw.de ing (BLS) spectroscopy and microwave absorption (MA) measurements to simultaneously probe both magnonic and photonic excitations in a coupled SRR/YIG film system, which is a first step towards wavelength upconversion. We observe a clear mode anti-crossing indicating a hybridization of the magnon and micro...