We report the magnetic response of Co/Pt multilayers to picosecond electrical heating. Using photoconductive Auston switches, we generate electrical pulses with 5.5 picosecond duration and hundreds of pico-Joules to pass through Co/Pt multilayers. The electrical pulse heats the electrons in the Co/Pt multilayers and causes an ultrafast reduction in the magnetic moment. A comparison between optical and electrically induced demagnetization of the Co/Pt multilayers reveals significantly different dynamics for optical vs. electrical heating. We attribute the disparate dynamics to the dependence of the electron-phonon interaction on the average energy and total number of initially excited electrons.
@article{arxiv.1609.00758,
title = {Electric Current Induced Ultrafast Demagnetization},
author = {R. B. Wilson and Yang Yang and Jon Gorchon and Charles-Henri Lambert and Sayeef Salahuddin and Jeffrey Bokor},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.00758},
year = {2017}
}