  Magnonic nano-devices exploit magnons -- quanta of spin waves -- to transmit
and process information within a single integrated platform that has the
potential to outperform traditional semiconductor-based electronics for low
power applications. The main missing cornerstone of this information
nanotechnology is an efficient scheme for the direct amplification of
propagating spin waves. The recent discovery of spin-orbit torque provided an
elegant mechanism for propagation losses compensation. While partial
compensation of the spin-wave damping has allowed for spin-wave signal
modulation, true amplification - the exponential increase in the spin-wave
intensity during propagation - has so far remained elusive. Here we evidence
the operating conditions to achieve unambiguous amplification using clocked
nanoseconds-long spin-orbit torque pulses in sub-micrometer wide magnonic
waveguides, where the effective magnetization has been engineered to be close
to zero to suppress the detrimental magnon-magnon scattering. As a result, we
achieve an exponential increase in the intensity of propagating spin waves up
to 500 % at a propagation distance of several micrometers. These results pave
the way towards the implementation of energy efficient, cascadable magnonic
architectures for wave-based information processing and complex on-chip
computation.
