ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of contemporary methods for spin-wave excitation and propagation. It focuses on the exploitation of spin textures for the generation and propagation of spin waves with very short wavelengths as well as on the 3D nature of such excited waves. Spin waves occur with wavelengths from macroscopic down to atomic scales and their frequencies range up to the THz regime. A spin vortex is a nontrivial topological spin distribution, where the magnetization arranges in a planary flux-closing way in order to minimize the magnetodipolar energy. An analytical model was developed that allows the calculation of the plane spin-wave dispersion relations. A different route for the excitation of spin waves is to convert external, uniformly alternating magnetic fields into inhomogeneous local fields and hence spin waves by exploiting the internal magnetic fields of the sample itself. The directional propagation and controlled waveguiding of spin waves plays an important role in realizing magnonic devices.
