The field of science that refers to information transport and processing by spin waves is known as magnonics. This name relates to the magnon – the spin-wave quantum associated with the flip of a single spin. The usage of magnonic approaches in the field of spintronics, hitherto dealing with electron-carried spin currents, gave birth to the field of magnon spintronics. This field is currently emerging, and considers magnon-based data buses, data processing elements operating with analogous and digital information, as well as converters between the magnon subsystem and the electron-carried spin and charge currents.

In this context, a magnetic insulator such as yttrium iron garnet (YIG) is of particular interest for magnon spintronics due to its extremely small damping parameter that ensures transport of spin information over macroscopic distances up to centimeters. Moreover, a magnetic insulator provides Joule-heat-free transfer and processing of spin information.