Efficient all-optical helicity dependent switching of spins in a Pt/Co/Pt film by a dual-pulse excitation

Abstract

All-optical helicity dependent switching (AO-HDS), deterministic control of magnetization by circularly polarized laser pulses, allows to efficiently manipulate spins without the need of a magnetic field. However, AO-HDS in ferromagnetic metals so far requires many laser pulses for fully switching their magnetic states. Using a combination of a short, 90-fs linearly polarized pulse and a subsequent longer, 3-ps circularly polarized pulse, we demonstrate that the number of pulses for full magnetization reversal can be reduced to 4 pulse pairs in a single stack of Pt/Co/Pt. The obtained results suggest that the dual-pulse approach is a potential route towards realizing efficient AO-HDS in ferromagnetic metals.

arXiv comment11 pages, 3 figures

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Helicity-independent all-optical switching of magnetization in ferrimagnetic alloys
• Plasmon-enhanced optical control of magnetism at the nanoscale via the inverse Faraday effect
• Optically-induced magnetization switching in NiCo2O4 thin films using ultrafast lasers
• Ultrafast behavior of induced and intrinsic magnetic moments in CoFeB/Pt bilayers probed by element-specific measurements in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range
• Laser-induced helicity and texture-dependent switching of nanoscale stochastic domains in a ferromagnetic film
• Magnetization precession after non-collinear dual optical excitation
• Exploring the impact of the inverse Faraday effect on all-optical helicity-dependent magnetization switching
• Quality of Helicity-Dependent Magnetization Switching by Phonons