Spin injection across interfaces driven by ultrashort optical pulses on femtosecond timescales constitutes a new way to design spintronics applications. Targeted utilization of this phenomenon requires knowledge of the efficiency of non-equilibrium spin injection. From a quantitative comparison of ab-initio time-dependent density functional theory and interface-sensitive, time-resolved non-linear optical experiment, we determine the spin injection efficiencies (SIE) across ferromagnetic/metal interfaces and discuss their microscopic origin, i.e. the influence of spin-orbit coupling and the interface electronic structure. Moreover, we find that the SIE can be optimized through laser pulse and materials parameters, namely the fluence, pulse duration, and substrate material.
@article{arxiv.2206.00498,
title = {Transient spin injection efficiencies at ferromagnet/metal interfaces},
author = {P. Elliott and A. Eschenlohr and J. Chen and S. Shallcross and U. Bovensiepen and J. K. Dewhurst and S. Sharma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.00498},
year = {2022}
}