Influence of disorder at insulator-metal interface on spin transport

Abstract

The spin transport is carried by spin-polarized electrons in the metal and by magnons in the insulator. We compute the spin current in the presence of a spin accumulation in the metal, caused by the spin Hall effect, and a thermal gradient using Fermi's golden rule in the presence of interfacial disorder. For a perfectly clean interface, the in-plane momentum is conserved by the electron-magnon scattering events that govern the spin transport through the interface. We calculate how the disorder-induced broadening of scattering matrix elements with respect to the in-plane momentum influences the spin current. As a general result, we observe that, specifically for high temperatures, one should expect a rather small effect of interface disorder on the measured spin current, while for small temperatures there is a significant reduction of a spin current with increasing disorder.