Laser-induced Ultrafast Demagnetization in the Presence of a Nanoscale Magnetic Domain Network

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2012 Aug 16

PMID 22893123

Citations 17

Authors

Boris Vodungbo

Julien Gautier

Guillaume Lambert

Anna Barszczak Sardinha

Magali Lozano

Stephane Sebban

Mathieu Ducousso

Willem Boutu

Kaigong Li

Bharati Tudu

Marina Tortarolo

Ranjit Hawaldar

Renaud Delaunay

Victor Lopez-Flores

Jacek Arabski

Christine Boeglin

Hamed Merdji

Philippe Zeitoun

Jan Luning

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Femtosecond magnetization phenomena have been challenging our understanding for over a decade. Most experiments have relied on infrared femtosecond lasers, limiting the spatial resolution to a few micrometres. With the advent of femtosecond X-ray sources, nanometric resolution can now be reached, which matches key length scales in femtomagnetism such as the travelling length of excited 'hot' electrons on a femtosecond timescale. Here we study laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization in [Co/Pd](30) multilayer films, which, for the first time, achieves a spatial resolution better than 100 nm by using femtosecond soft X-ray pulses. This allows us to follow the femtosecond demagnetization process in a magnetic system consisting of alternating nanometric domains of opposite magnetization. No modification of the magnetic structure is observed, but, in comparison with uniformly magnetized systems of similar composition, we find a significantly faster demagnetization time. We argue that this may be caused by direct transfer of spin angular momentum between neighbouring domains.

Citing Articles

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