The advantage of an ultrafast frequency-tunability of spin-torque nano-oscillators (STNOs) that have a large (>100 MHz) relaxation frequency of amplitude fluctuations is exploited to realize ultrafast wide-band time-resolved spectral analysis at nanosecond time scale with a frequency resolution limited only by the “bandwidth” theorem. The demonstration is performed with an STNO generating in the 9 GHz frequency range and comprised of a perpendicular polarizer and a perpendicularly and uniformly magnetized “free” layer. It is shown that such a uniform-state STNO-based spectrum analyzer can efficiently perform spectral analysis of frequency-agile signals with rapidly varying frequency components.

This article has been published by ACS Nano Letters and is available here.