Nonequilibrium thermodynamics of the spin Seebeck and spin Peltier effects

We study the problem of magnetization and heat currents and their associated thermodynamic forces in a magnetic system by focusing on the magnetization transport in ferromagnetic insulators like YIG. The resulting theory is applied to the longitudinal spin Seebeck and spin Peltier effects. By focusing on the specific geometry with one Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) layer and one Pt layer, we obtain the optimal conditions for generating large magnetization currents into Pt or large temperature effects in YIG. The theoretical predictions are compared with experiments from the literature permitting to derive the values of the thermomagnetic coefficients of YIG: the magnetization diffusion length lM ∼0.4 μm and the absolute thermomagnetic power coefficient εM∼10−2 TK−1.