Theory of the spin Seebeck effect influenced by crystal-field excitations in Tb$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$

Abstract

The spin Seebeck effect (SSE) is a phenomenon of thermoelectric generation that occurs within a device consisting of a bilayer of a metal and a ferromagnet. When Tb$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ (TbIG) is substituted for the ferromagnet, the effect goes to zero at low temperatures, yet it increases to positive values with the application of a magnetic field. This is opposite to the expectation that the SSE should be suppressed by a magnetic field due to the increase in the magnon gap. In this paper, the crystal-field excitations (CFE) in TbIG are calculated within a mean field theory exploiting the parameters of Terbium Gallium Garnet Tb$_3$Ga$_5$O$_{12}$ (TGG) from the neutron-scattering experimental literature. Like TGG, the primitive cell of TbIG hosts twelve Tb sites with six inequivalent magnetic sublattices, but due to the net $[111]$-molecular field from the tetrahedral and octahedral Fe ions, these can be classified into two distinct groups, the $\mathbf{C}$ and the $\mathbf{C'}$ sites, which account for the `double umbrella' magnetic structure. We show that when an external magnetic field is applied along the [111] direction of the crystal, the lowest CFE of the $\mathbf{C}$ sublattices decreases. As a consequence of the magnetic field dependence of the lowest CFE, we find that at low temperatures the SSE in TbIG can result enhanced by an applied magnetic field.