Ultrafast Opto-magnetic Effects in the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectral Range

Abstract

Coherent light-matter interactions mediated by opto-magnetic phenomena like the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) are expected to provide a non-thermal pathway for ultrafast manipulation of magnetism on timescales as short as the excitation pulse itself. As the IFE scales with the spin-orbit coupling strength of the involved electronic states, photo-exciting the strongly spin-orbit coupled core-level electrons in magnetic materials appears as an appealing method to transiently generate large opto-magnetic moments. Here, we investigate this scenario in a ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloy by using intense and circularly polarized pulses of extreme ultraviolet radiation. Our results reveal ultrafast and strong helicity-dependent magnetic effects which are in line with the characteristic fingerprints of an IFE, corroborated by ab initio opto-magnetic IFE theory and atomistic spin dynamics simulations.

References in corpus (9)

• Atomistic spin model simulations of magnetic nanomaterials
• Petahertz Spintronics
• Ab Initio Theory of Coherent Laser-Induced Magnetization in Metals
• Spin-current-mediated rapid magnon localisation and coalescence after ultrafast optical pumping of ferrimagnetic alloys
• Laser-induced torques in metallic ferromagnets
• Ultrafast X-Ray Induced Changes of the Electronic and Magnetic Response of Solids Due to Valence Electron Redistribution
• Magneto-Optical Functions at the 3p resonances of Fe, Co, and Ni: Ab-initio description and experiment
• Distinct Ultrafast Electronic and Magnetic Response in M-edge Magnetic Circular Dichroism
• Laser-induced torques in metallic antiferromagnets

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Exploring the impact of the inverse Faraday effect on all-optical helicity-dependent magnetization switching
• Floquet Engineering Clock Transitions in Magnetic Molecules