Optical Control of 4 Orbital State in Rare-earth Metals

Overview

Journal Sci Adv

Specialties Biology
Science

Date 2024 Apr 17

PMID 38630818

Authors

Nele Thielemann-Kuhn

Tim Amrhein

Wibke Bronsch

Somnath Jana

Niko Pontius

Robin Y Engel

Piter S Miedema

Dominik Legut

Karel Carva

Unai Atxitia

Benjamin E Van Kuiken

Martin Teichmann

Robert E Carley

Laurent Mercadier

Alexander Yaroslavtsev

Giuseppe Mercurio

Loic Le Guyader

Naman Agarwal

Rafael Gort

Andres Scherz

Siarhei Dziarzhytski

Gunter Brenner

Federico Pressacco

Ru-Pan Wang

Jan O Schunck

Mangalika Sinha

Martin Beye

Gheorghe S Chiuzbaian

Peter M Oppeneer

Martin Weinelt

Christian Schussler-Langeheine

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

A change of orbital state alters the coupling between ions and their surroundings drastically. Orbital excitations are hence key to understand and control interaction of ions. Rare-earth elements with strong magneto-crystalline anisotropy (MCA) are important ingredients for magnetic devices. Thus, control of their localized 4 magnetic moments and anisotropy is one major challenge in ultrafast spin physics. With time-resolved x-ray absorption and resonant inelastic scattering experiments, we show for Tb metal that 4-electronic excitations out of the ground-state multiplet occur after optical pumping. These excitations are driven by inelastic 5-4-electron scattering, altering the 4-orbital state and consequently the MCA with important implications for magnetization dynamics in 4-metals and more general for the excitation of localized electronic states in correlated materials.

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