Science Daily April 25, 2022
How the spin evolves in the nanoworld on extremely short time scales, in one millionth of one billionth of a second, has remained largely mysterious. An international team of researchers (Austria, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, France, China) used a tabletop ultrafast soft X-ray microscope based on a high-energy Ytterbium laser to spatio-temporally resolve the spin dynamics inside rare earth materials. They recorded a series of snapshot images of the nanoscale rare earth magnetic structures providing rich information on the magnetic properties that are as accurate as those obtained using large-scale X-ray facilities. According to the researchers the soft X-ray source provides a robust, cost-efficient, and energy-scalable elegant solution for many laboratories. It allows the study of ultrafast dynamics in nanoscale and mesoscale structures with both nanometre spatial and femtosecond temporal resolutions, as well as with the element specificity. It could be used for many applications in physics, chemistry, and biology…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Illustration of the physical mechanism… Credit: Optica Vol. 9, Issue 4, pp. 399-407 (2022)