Inertial displacement of a domain wall excited by ultra-short circularly polarized laser pulses

Abstract

Domain wall motion driven by ultra-short laser pulses is a prerequisite for envisaged low-power spintronics combining storage of information in magneto electronic devices with high speed and long distance transmission of information encoded in circularly polarized light. Here we demonstrate the conversion of the circular polarization of incident femtosecond laser pulses into inertial displacement of a domain wall in a ferromagnetic semiconductor. In our study we combine electrical measurements and magneto-optical imaging of the domain wall displacement with micromagnetic simulations. The optical spin transfer torque acts over a picosecond recombination time of the spin polarized photo-carriers which only leads to a deformation of the internal domain wall structure. We show that subsequent depinning and micro-meter distance displacement without an applied magnetic field or any other external stimuli can only occur due to the inertia of the domain wall.

References in corpus (4)

• All-optical control of ferromagnetic thin films and nanostructures
• High domain wall velocities due to spin currents perpendicular to the plane
• Direct Observation of Massless Domain Wall Dynamics in Nanostripes with Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy
• Optical spin transfer torque driven domain wall motion in ferromagnetic semiconductor

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Magneto-Seebeck microscopy of domain switching in collinear antiferromagnet CuMnAs
• Cavity Optomechanics of Topological Spin Textures in Magnetic Insulators
• Domain wall dynamics due to femtosecond laser-induced superdiffusive spin transport
• Chiral excitations of magnetic droplet solitons driven by their own inertia
• Systematic motion of magnetic domain walls in notched nanowires under ultra-short current pulses
• Laser-induced helicity and texture-dependent switching of nanoscale stochastic domains in a ferromagnetic film