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Ultrafast magnetism

Down to the nanometre scale

Nature Materials volume 12, pages 283–284 (2013)Cite this article

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The rich dynamics of magnetic materials subject to very short laser pulses is important for both information processing and recording technology. The characterization of these phenomena with nanoscale spatial resolution shines new light on our understanding of them.

The magnetic structure of the alloy classifies it as a ferrimagnet, and makes it an interesting material for applications because the magnetization can be controlled by harnessing the polarization of ultrashort pulses of laser light2. Graves et al. now show that the change in the bulk magnetization induced by the femtosecond laser pulses arises from a nonlocal angular momentum transfer between the 3d spins of the iron atoms and the 4f spins of the gadolinium ions. Significantly, this mechanism, which occurs on the timescale of a picosecond, is strongly affected by chemical disorder, which occurs over length scales of tens of nanometres.

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Figure 1: Magnetic behaviour of a ferrimagnetic Gd24Fe66.5Co9.5 alloy.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jean-Yves Bigot is at the CNRS and Université de Strasbourg, IPCMS and NIE laboratories, UMR 7504, 23 rue du Loess, 67034 Strasbourg, France,

    Jean-Yves Bigot

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  1. Jean-Yves Bigot
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Correspondence to Jean-Yves Bigot.

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Bigot, JY. Down to the nanometre scale. Nature Mater 12, 283–284 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat3605

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