Related papers: Hot spin spots in the laser-induced demagnetizatio…
Optically induced demagnetization of 3d metallic ferromagnets proceeds as fast as ~100 fs and is a crucial prerequisite for spintronic applications, such as ultrafast magnetization switching and spin transport. On the 100 fs time scale, the…
Magnetic recording using circularly polarized femto-second laser pulses is an emerging technology that would allow write speeds much faster than existing field driven methods. However, the mechanism that drives the magnetization switching…
The ultrafast response to an optical pulse excitation of the spin-spin exchange interaction in transition metal anti-ferromagnets is studied within the framework of the time-dependent spin-density functional theory. We propose a formulation…
Femtosecond laser excitation of nanometer thin heterostructures comprising a heavy metal and a magnetically ordered material is known to result in the emission of terahertz radiation. However, the nature of the emitted radiation from heavy…
Spin and orbital angular momenta are two intrinsic properties of an electron and are responsible for the physics of a solid. How the spin and orbital evolve with respect to each other on several hundred femtoseconds is largely unknown, but…
Reducing energy dissipation while increasing speed in computation and memory is a long-standing challenge for spintronics research. In the last 20 years, femtosecond lasers have emerged as a tool to control the magnetization in specific…
It is now well established that a few femtosecond laser pulse will induce an ultrafast loss of moment in a magnetic material. Here we show that the opposite effect can also occur: an ultrafast increase in moment. Employing both…
We develop a theory of the magnetization dynamics triggered by ultrafast optical excitation of ferromagnetic semiconductors. We describe the effects of the strong carrier spin relaxation on the nonlinear optical response by using the…
Laser pulses are known to induce symmetric demagnetization: equal loss of magnetic moments in the identical sublattices of antiferromagnets and ferromagnets at ultrashort timescales. Using time-dependent density functional theory, we show…
Spin currents have been shown to play a key role in the ultrafast laser-driven demagnetization process in ferromagnetic thin films. Here, we show that an oscillating spin current can be generated in the film via the application of a…
Femtosecond x-ray magnetic circular dichroism was used to study the time-dependent magnetic moment of 4 fs electrons in the ferromagnets Gd and Tb, which are known for their different spin-lattice coupling. We observe a two-step…
Laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization is an important phenomenon that probes arguably ultimate limits of the angular momentum dynamics in solid. Unfortunately, many aspects of the dynamics remain unclear except that the demagnetization…
This year the discovery of femtosecond demagnetization by laser pulses is 20 years old. For the first time this milestone work by Bigot and coworkers gave insight in a very direct way into the time scales of microscopic interactions that…
Optical spin pumping of color centers in diamond is presently attracting broad interest as a platform for dynamic nuclear polarization at room temperature, but the mechanisms involved in the generation and transport of polarization within…
The impulsive generation of two-magnon modes in antiferromagnets by femtosecond optical pulses, so-called femto-nanomagnons, leads to coherent longitudinal oscillations of the antiferromagnetic order parameter that cannot be described by a…
Faster magnetic recording technology is indispensable to massive data storage and big data sciences. {All-optical spin switching offers a possible solution}, but at present it is limited to a handful of expensive and complex rare-earth…
We investigate the non-resonant all-optical switching of magnetization. We treat the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) theoretically in terms of the spin-selective optical Stark effect for linearly or circularly polarized light. In the dilute…
Using an ultrashort laser pulse we explore {\it ab-initio} the spin dynamics of Gd$_x$(FeCo)$_{1-x}$ at femtosecond time scales. Optical excitations are found to drive charge from Fe majority $d$-states to the unoccupied Gd $f$-minority…
Laser induced ultrafast demagnetization is the process whereby the magnetic moment of a ferromagnetic material is seen to drop significantly on a timescale of $10-100$s of femtoseconds due to the application of a strong laser pulse. If this…
Experimentally observed ultrafast all-optical magnetization reversal in ferrimagnetic metals and heterostructures based on antiferromagnetically coupled ferromagnetic $d-$ and $f-$metallic layers relies on intricate energy and angular…