Two types of all-optical magnetization switching mechanisms using femtosecond laser pulses

By M. S. E. Hadri, P. Pirro, C. Lambert, M. Hehn, F. Montaigne, G. Malinowski, Stéphane Mangin, Salah El Hadri. 2016

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Using a time-dependent electrical investigation of the all-optical switching in ferrimagnetic and ferromagnetic Hall crosses via the anomalous Hall effect, intriguing insights into the rich physics underlying the all-optical switching are provided. We demonstrate that two different all-optical magnetization switching mechanisms can be distinguished; a " single pulse " switching for ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloys, and a " two regimes " switching process for both ferrimagnetic TbCo alloys and ferromagnetic Pt/Co multilayers. We show that the latter takes place at two different time scales, and consists of a steplike helicity-independent multiple-domain formation within the first 1 ms followed by a helicity-dependent remagnetization on several tens of milliseconds.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7c91f4863acc1d4aecffc2e7ce7420ed26e25c3b