Femtosecond Magnetism

CIC nanoGUNE Seminars

Speaker

Mirko Cinchetti, TU Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germanay

When

2012/04/16
13:00

Place

nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian

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Femtosecond laser pulses are one of the most intriguing tools to control and manipulate the magnetization of magnetic materials on the ultrashort time scale. For example, they can be used to trigger the so-­‐called ultrafast demagnetization, a loss of magnetic order taking place within some hundreds of femtoseconds only. Although this phenomenon is being studied since more than a decade now, the underlying microscopic mechanisms are still matter of debate. In the first part of my talk, I will present recent experimental results on the ultrafast magnetization dynamics of 3d-­‐ferromagnets and half-­‐metallic Heusler compounds. We performed time-­‐resolved magneto-­‐optical Kerr effect (TR-­‐MOKE) measurements on cobalt and nickel, as well as on the Heusler alloys Co2FeSi and Co2MnSi. In the second part of my talk, I will discuss the more recent phenomenon of all-­‐optical switching, where circularly polarized laser pulses are used to switch the magnetization state of the ferrimagnetic rare earth-­‐transition metal alloy GdFeCo without any additional external magnetic field.