We report an experimental observation of magnon-magnon coupling in interlayer exchange coupled synthetic antiferromagnets of $\mathrm{FeCoB}/\mathrm{Ru}/\mathrm{FeCoB}$ layers. An anticrossing gap of spin-wave resonance between acoustic and optic modes appears when the external magnetic field points to the direction tilted from the spin-wave propagation. The magnitude of the gap (i.e., coupling strength) can be controlled by changing the direction of the in-plane magnetic field and also enhanced by increasing the wave number of excited spin waves. We find that the coupling strength under the specified conditions is larger than the dissipation rates of both the resonance modes, indicating that a strong coupling regime is satisfied. A theoretical analysis based on the Landau-Lifshitz equation shows quantitative agreement with the experiments and indicates that the anticrossing gap appears when the exchange symmetry of two magnetizations is broken by the spin-wave excitation.

• Received 18 February 2020
• Accepted 3 June 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.017203