Science Daily August 21, 2018
An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – MIT, France) examined heat transport in a metallic-magnetic model system. Their model system consists of a nanometre-thin ferromagnetic nickel layer (12.4 nm) applied to a magnesium oxide substrate, with an even thinner layer of gold (5.6 nm) deposited over the nickel. They introduced heat locally into the model system. They found that the model system does not take the roughly one picosecond to reach thermal equilibrium as expected, but instead a hundred times longer. According to the researchers future data memories based on heat-assisted magnetic recording techniques (HAMR) can be locally heated and overwritten with laser pulses. With a deeper understanding of the transport processes, such systems could be developed in such a way that they can manage with minimal input energy… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
The physical mechanisms by which the heat is distributed can be analysed by temporally resolved X-ray diffraction experiments. Credit: HZB/University Potsdam