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
- Add to calendar
- iCal
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-Ââ€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-Ââ€ferromagnets and
half-Ââ€metallic Heusler compounds. We performed time-Ââ€resolved
magneto-Ââ€optical Kerr effect (TR-Ââ€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-Ââ€optical switching, where circularly polarized laser pulses are used
to switch the magnetization state of the ferrimagnetic rare
earth-Ââ€transition metal alloy GdFeCo without any additional external
magnetic field.