Phys.org July 5, 2024
Coherent light-matter interactions mediated by opto-magnetic phenomena like the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) are expected to provide a non-thermal pathway for ultrafast manipulation of magnetism on timescales as short as the excitation pulse itself. As the IFE scales with the spin-orbit coupling strength of the involved electronic states, photo-exciting the strongly spin-orbit coupled core-level electrons in magnetic materials appears as an appealing method to transiently generate large opto-magnetic moments. An international team of researchers (Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, Slovenia, Sweden, UK) investigated this scenario in a ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloy by using intense and circularly polarized pulses of extreme ultraviolet radiation. Their results revealed ultrafast and strong helicity-dependent magnetic effects which were in line with the characteristic fingerprints of an IFE, corroborated by ab initio opto-magnetic IFE theory and atomistic spin dynamics simulations… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Experimental concept and spectroscopy. Credit: Communications Physics volume 7, Article number: 191 (2024)