Calculation of high-frequency permeability of magnonic metamaterials beyond the macrospin approximation

We present a method of calculation of the effective magnetic permeability of magnonic metamaterials containing arrays of magnetic inclusions of arbitrary shapes. The method fully takes into account the spectrum of spin waves confined in the inclusions. We evaluate the method by considering a particular case of a metamaterial formed by a stack of identical two-dimensional (2D) periodic hexagonal arrays of disk-shaped magnetic inclusions in a nonmagnetic matrix. Two versions of the method are considered. The first approach is based on a simple semianalytical theory that uses the numerically calculated susceptibility tensor of an isolated inclusion as input data for an analytical calculation in which the magnetodipole interaction between inclusions within each 2D array is taken into account. In the second approach, we employ micromagnetic packages with periodic boundary conditions to calculate the susceptibility of the whole 2D periodic array of such inclusions. The comparison of the two approaches reveals the necessity of retaining higher-order terms in the analytical calculation of the magnetodipole interaction via the multipole expansion. Models limited to the dipolar term can lead to remarkable underestimation of the effect of the magnetodipole interaction, in particular, for modes localized near the edge regions of inclusions. To calculate the susceptibility tensor of an isolated inclusion, we have implemented two different methods: (a) a method based on micromagnetic simulations, in which we have compared three different micromagnetic packages: the finite-element package nmag and the two finite differences packages oommf and micromagus; and (b) the modified dynamical matrix method (DMM). The comparison of the different micromagnetic packages and the DMM (based on the calculation of the susceptibility tensor of an isolated inclusion) demonstrate that their results agree to within 3%. Frequency regions in which the metamaterial is characterized by the negative permeability are identified. We speculate that the proposed methodology could be generalized to more complex arrangements of magnetic inclusions, e.g., to those with multiple periods or fractal arrangements, as well as to arrays of inclusions with a distribution of properties. © 2012 American Physical Society.