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arXiv · 2303.08564

Ultrafast Opto-magnetic Effects in the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectral Range

Martin Hennecke·Clemens von Korff Schmising·Kelvin Yao·Emmanuelle Jal·Boris Vodungbo·Valentin Chardonnet·Katherine Légaré·Flavio Capotondi·Denys Naumenko·Emanuele Pedersoli·Ignacio Lopez-Quintas·Ivaylo P. Nikolov·Lorenzo Raimondi·Giovanni De Ninno·Leandro Salemi·Sergiu Ruta·Roy Chantrell·Thomas Ostler·Bastian Pfau·Dieter Engel·Peter M. Oppeneer·Stefan Eisebitt·Ilie Radu
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Abstract

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. Here, we investigate this scenario in a ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloy by using intense and circularly polarized pulses of extreme ultraviolet radiation. Our results reveal ultrafast and strong helicity-dependent magnetic effects which are in line with the characteristic fingerprints of an IFE, corroborated by ab initio opto-magnetic IFE theory and atomistic spin dynamics simulations.

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Martin Hennecke, Clemens von Korff Schmising, Kelvin Yao, Emmanuelle Jal, Boris Vodungbo, Valentin Chardonnet, Katherine Légaré, Flavio Capotondi, Denys Naumenko, Emanuele Pedersoli, Ignacio Lopez-Quintas, Ivaylo P. Nikolov, Lorenzo Raimondi, Giovanni De Ninno, Leandro Salemi, Sergiu Ruta, Roy Chantrell, Thomas Ostler, Bastian Pfau, Dieter Engel, Peter M. Oppeneer, Stefan Eisebitt, Ilie Radu. 2023-03-15. Ultrafast Opto-magnetic Effects in the Extreme Ultraviolet Spectral Range. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-024-01686-7

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