Orbital Pumping in Ferrimagnetic Insulators

We report the detection of pure orbital currents generated by both coherent and thermal magnons in the magnetic insulator Bi-doped yttrium iron garnet (BiYIG). The pumping of orbital and spin currents is jointly investigated in nanodevices made of naturally oxidized Cu, pure Cu, Pt, and Cr. The absence of charge conduction in BiYIG and the negligible spin-to-charge conversion of oxidized Cu allows us to disambiguate the orbital current contribution. Comparative measurements on YIG and BiYIG show that the origin of the orbital pumping in BiYIG/oxidized Cu is the dynamics of the orbital magnetization in the magnetic insulator. In Cr, the pumping signal is dominated by the negative spin Hall effect rather than the positive orbital Hall effect, indicating that orbital currents represent a minority of the total angular momentum current pumped from the magnetic insulator. Our results also evidence that improving the interfacial transparency significantly enhances pumping efficiencies, not only for spin but also for orbital currents.