Optical excitation of single- and multi-mode magnetization precession in Galfenol nanolayers

Abstract

We demonstrate a variety of precessional responses of the magnetization to ultrafast optical excitation in nanolayers of Galfenol (Fe,Ga), which is a ferromagnetic material with large saturation magnetization and enhanced magnetostriction. The particular properties of Galfenol, including cubic magnetic anisotropy and weak damping, allow us to detect up to 6 magnon modes in a 120-nm layer, and a single mode with effective damping ${\alpha }_{eff}$ = 0.005 and frequency up to 100 GHz in a 4-nm layer. This is the highest frequency observed to date in time-resolved experiments with metallic ferromagnets. We predict that detection of magnetization precession approaching THz frequencies should be possible with Galfenol nanolayers.

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• Magnon polaron formed by selectively coupled coherent magnon and phonon modes of a surface patterned ferromagnet
• Optical excitation of propagating magnetostatic waves in an epitaxial Galfenol film by an ultrafast magnetic anisotropy change
• Effect of magnetic anisotropy relaxation on laser-induced magnetization precession in thin galfenol films
• Excitation of high-frequency magnon modes in magnetoelastic films by short strain pulses
• A two-color dual-comb system for time-resolved measurements of ultrafast magnetization dynamics using triggerless asynchronous optical sampling
• Laser-driven first-order spin reorientation and Verwey phase transitions in the magnetite Fe${}_3$O${}_4$ beyond the range of thermodynamic equilibrium
• Resonant thermal energy transfer to magnons in a ferromagnetic nanolayer
• Nonreciprocal collective magnetostatic wave modes in geometrically asymmetric bilayer structure with nonmagnetic spacer
• Transition magnon modes in thin ferromagnetic nanogratings