Magnetoelectronic spin echo

Abstract

We predict a spin echo in electron transport through layered ferromagnetic-normal-ferromagnetic metal structures: whereas a spin current polarized perpendicular to the magnetization direction decays when traversing a single homogeneous ferromagnet on the scale of the ferromagnetic spin-coherence length, it partially reappears by adding a second identical but antiparallel ferromagnet. This reentrant transverse spin current resembles the spin-echo effect in the magnetization of nuclei under pulsed excitations. We propose an experimental setup to measure the spin echo.