Optical control of 4f orbital state in rare-earth metals
Abstract
A change of orbital state alters the coupling between ions and their surroundings drastically. Orbital excitations are hence key to understand and control interaction of ions. Rare-earth (RE) elements with strong magneto-crystalline anisotropy (MCA) are important ingredients for magnetic devices. Thus, control of their localized 4f magnetic moments and anisotropy is one major challenge in ultrafast spin physics. With time-resolved X-ray absorption and resonant inelastic scattering experiments, we show for Tb metal that 4f-electronic excitations out of the ground state multiplet occur after optical pumping. These excitations are driven by inelastic 5d-4f-electron scattering, alter the 4f-orbital state and consequently the MCA with important implications for magnetization dynamics in 4f-metals, and more general for the excitation of localized electronic states in correlated materials.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2106.09999,
title = {Optical control of 4f orbital state in rare-earth metals},
author = {N. Thielemann-Kühn and T. Amrhein and W. Bronsch and S. Jana and N. Pontius and R. Y. Engel and P. S. Miedema and D. Legut and K. Carva and U. Atxitia and B. E. van Kuiken and M. Teichmann and R. E. Carley and L. Mercadier and A. Yaroslavtsev and G. Mercurio and L. Le Guyader and N. Agarwal and R. Gort and A. Scherz and S. Dziarzhytski and G. Brenner and F. Pressacco and R. Wang and J. O. Schunck and M. Sinha and M. Beye and G. S. Chiuzbăian and P. M. Oppeneer and M. Weinelt and C. Schüßler-Langeheine},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.09999},
year = {2024}
}
Comments
Manuscript (23 pages, 5 figures) and Supplementary Information (32 pages, 10 figures)