Correction to: Nature Physics https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-021-01366-1, published online 4 October 2021.

In the version of this Perspective originally published, there were errors in the reference numbering and in the format of Table 1. In the original version, ref. 34 (Stupakiewicz, A. et al. Ultrafast phononic switching of magnetization. Nat. Phys. 17, 489–492 (2021)) should have been ref. 35, and ref. 74 (Khalsa, G. & Benedek, N. A. Ultrafast optically induced ferromagnetic/anti-ferromagnetic phase transition in GdTiO3 from first principles. npj Quant. Mater. 3, 15 (2018)) should have been ref. 34. The original refs. 34–73 have now become 35–74, and Khasla & Benedek are now ref 34. In Table 1, first “Nonlinearity” column, there were errors in the format of the second term of the first row, where “Q1driven” and “Q2driven” now appear as “Qdriven,1” and “Qdriven,2”.

These errors have been corrected in the online version of this Perspective.