Non-reciprocal Oersted field contribution to the current-induced frequency shift of magnetostatic surface waves

The influence of an electrical current on the propagation of magnetostatic surface waves is investigated in a relatively thick (40 nm) permalloy film both experimentally and theoretically. Contrary to previously studied thinner films where the dominating effect is the current-induced spin-wave Doppler shift, the magnetic field generated by the current (Oersted field) is found to induce a strong non-reciprocal frequency shift which overcompensates the Doppler shift. The measured current induced frequency shift is in agreement with the developed theory. The theory relates the sign of of the frequency shift to the spin wave modal profiles. The good agreement between the experiment and the theory confirms a recent prediction of a counter-intuitive mode localization for magnetostatic surface waves in the dipole-exchange regime.