Spintronics is concerned with replacing charge current with current of spin, the electron's intrinsic angular momentum. In magnetic insulators, spin currents are carried by magnons, the quanta of spin-wave excitations on top of the magnetically ordered state. Magnon spin currents are especially promising for information technology due to their low intrinsic damping, non-reciprocal transport, micrometer wavelengths at microwave frequencies, and strong interactions that enable signal transduction. In this perspective, we give our view on the progress and challenges toward realizing magnon spintronics based on atomically thin van der Waals magnets, a recently discovered class of magnetic materials of which the tunability and versatility have attracted a great deal of ongoing research.

We develop a microscopic theory of spin-lattice interactions in magnetic insulators, separating rigid-body rotations and the internal angular momentum, or spin, of the phonons, while conserving the total angular momentum. In the low-energy limit, the microscopic couplings are mapped onto experimentally accessible magnetoelastic constants. We show that the transient phonon spin contribution of the excited system can dominate over the magnon spin, leading to nontrivial Einstein-de Haas physics.

We theoretically study the effects of strong magnetoelastic coupling on the transport properties of magnetic insulators. We develop a Boltzmann transport theory for the mixed magnon-phonon modes ("magnon polarons") and determine transport coefficients and the spin diffusion length. Magnon-polaron formation causes anomalous features in the magnetic field and temperature dependence of the spin Seebeck effect when the disorder scattering in the magnetic and elastic subsystems is sufficiently different. Experimental data by Kikkawa [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 207203 (2016)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.117.207203] on yttrium iron garnet films can be explained by an acoustic quality that is much better than the magnetic quality of the material. We predict similar anomalous features in the spin and heat conductivity and nonlocal spin transport experiments.

We develop a linear-response transport theory of diffusive spin and heat transport by magnons in magnetic insulators with metallic contacts. The magnons are described by a position-dependent temperature and chemical potential that are governed by diffusion equations with characteristic relaxation lengths. Proceeding from a linearized Boltzmann equation, we derive expressions for length scales and transport coefficients. For yttrium iron garnet (YIG) at room temperature we find that long-range transport is dominated by the magnon chemical potential. We compare the model's results with recent experiments on YIG with Pt contacts [L. J. Cornelissen, Nat. Phys. 11, 1022 (2015)1745-247310.1038/nphys3465] and extract a magnon spin conductivity of σm=5×105 S/m. Our results for the spin Seebeck coefficient in YIG agree with published experiments. We conclude that the magnon chemical potential is an essential ingredient for energy and spin transport in magnetic insulators.

Sharp structures in the magnetic field-dependent spin Seebeck effect (SSE) voltages of Pt/Y3Fe5O12 at low temperatures are attributed to the magnon-phonon interaction. Experimental results are well reproduced by a Boltzmann theory that includes magnetoelastic coupling. The SSE anomalies coincide with magnetic fields tuned to the threshold of magnon-polaron formation. The effect gives insight into the relative quality of the lattice and magnetization dynamics.