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Dynamic control of magnetic nanowires by light-induced domain-wall kickoffs

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 202–206 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Controlling the speed at which systems evolve is a challenge shared by all disciplines, and otherwise unrelated areas use common theoretical frameworks towards this goal. A particularly widespread model is Glauber dynamics1, which describes the time evolution of the Ising model and can be applied to any binary system2,3,4,5,6,7. Here we show, using molecular nanowires under irradiation, that Glauber dynamics can be controlled by a novel domain-wall kickoff mechanism. In contrast to known processes, the kickoff has unambiguous fingerprints, slowing down the spin-flip attempt rate by several orders of magnitude, and following a scaling law. The required irradiance is very low, a substantial improvement over present methods of magneto-optical switching8,9. These results provide a new way to control and study stochastic dynamic processes. Being general for Glauber dynamics, they can be extended to different kinds of magnetic nanowires and to numerous fields, ranging from social evolution2 to neural networks5 and chemical reactivity3,4.

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Figure 1: Glauber dynamics and domain-wall kickoff.
Figure 2: Torque magnetometry.
Figure 3: Irradiation effect.
Figure 4: Domain-wall kickoff.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from Italian MIUR, German DFG (SPP1601, SFB-TRR21), the Humboldt Stiftung (Sofja Kovalevskaja award) and the Baden-Württemberg Stiftung (Kompetenznetz Funktionelle Nanostrukturen). We thank K. Kern, D. Wiersma, J. Wrachtrup and R. Sessoli for helpful discussions, L. Cavigli and M. Gurioli for the depletion control measurements and L. Sebeke for the movies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1. Physikalisches Institut, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, D-70550 Stuttgart, Germany

    Eric Heintze, Fadi El Hallak, Conrad Clauß, Martin Dressel & Lapo Bogani

  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Florence, Via G. Sansone 1, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy

    Angelo Rettori

  3. S3 Centre, Institute Nanoscience, CNR, Via G. Campi 213/a, I-41125 Modena, Italy

    Angelo Rettori

  4. Institute for Complex Systems, ISC-CNR, Via Madonna del Piano 10, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy

    Maria Gloria Pini

  5. Department of Chemistry, University of Florence, Via Lastruccia 3, I-50019 Sesto Fiorentino (FI), Italy

    Federico Totti

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  1. Eric Heintze
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  7. Martin Dressel
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  8. Lapo Bogani
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Contributions

F.E.H., E.H. and L.B. developed the experimental set-ups and performed the torque measurements. L.B., M.G.P. and A.R. developed the kickoff model. F.T. performed the ab initio calculations. L.B. devised the experiment, synthetized the samples and wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and contributed to the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lapo Bogani.

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Heintze, E., El Hallak, F., Clauß, C. et al. Dynamic control of magnetic nanowires by light-induced domain-wall kickoffs. Nature Mater 12, 202–206 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3498

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