Ultrafast Dynamics of Orbital Angular Momentum of Electrons Induced by Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Generation and Transfer Across Interfaces
arXiv:2306.12810 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.108.104408
Abstract
The orbital angular momenta (OAM) of electrons play an increasingly important role in ultrafast electron and magnetization dynamics. In this theoretical study, we investigate the electron dynamics induced by femtosecond laser pulses in a normal metal, a ferromagnet, and a ferromagnet/normal metal heterostructure. We analyze the spatio-temporal distributions of the laser-induced OAM and their respective currents. Our findings demonstrate that a circularly polarized laser pulse can induce a sizable and long-lasting OAM component in a normal metal. Furthermore, an interface between a ferromagnet and a normal metal facilitates the demagnetization of the magnet by the OAM contribution to the total magnetization. Finally, to transfer OAM from a ferromagnet into a normal metal, it is advantageous to use a laser setup that induces the desired OAM component in the ferromagnet, but not in the normal metal.
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Cited by in corpus (6)
- Ultrafast Orbital Hall Effect in Metallic Nanoribbons
- Controlling the orbital Hall effect in gapped bilayer graphene in the terahertz regime
- Ultrafast chiral precession of spin and orbital angular momentum induced by circularly polarized laser pulse
- Scattering makes a difference in circular dichroic angle-resolved photoemission
- Surface photoelectric effect by twisted photons as a source of twisted electrons
- Nonlinear spin and orbital Rashba-Edelstein effects induced by a femtosecond laser pulse: Simulations for Au(001)