  It is experimentally shown that the critical current for onset of spin-torque
instability in current-perpendicular-to-plane spin-valves can be strongly
enhanced using "synthetic ferrimagnet" free-layers of form FM1/Ru/FM2
(FM=ferrromagnet). However, this enhancement occurs for only one polarity of
bias current. A two-macrospin model is shown to reproduce the observations. The
model suggests that this phenomenon is related to a polarity-dependent,
spin-torque induced co-resonance between the two natural dynamic modes of the
FM1/FM2 couple. The resonance condition facilitates energy transfer out of the
spin-torque destabilized mode into the other stable mode whose effective
damping is actually enhanced by spin-torques, thereby delaying the onset of
instability of this coupled system to larger critical currents.
