Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 14: Magnetization Dynamics II
MA 14.3: Talk
Monday, March 14, 2011, 17:30–17:45, HSZ 403
Investigating the opto-magnetic switching in ferrimagnetic GdFeCo — •Stefan Gerlach1, Denise Hinzke1, Thomas Ostler2, Roy W. Chantrell2, and Ulrich Nowak1 — 1University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany — 2University of York, York YO10 5DD, U. K.
It was recently demonstrated [1] that a 100 fs circularly polarized laser pulse is able to reverse the magnetization on a picosecond time scale as if the laser pulse acts as an equally short magnetic field pulse with a polarization dependent direction caused by the so-called inverse Faraday effect. However, so far this opto-magnetic switching has only been successfully demonstrated for a certain class of ferrimagnetic thin films and only for a narrow window of parameters [2].
To investigate the opto-magnetic magnetization reversal, we use Landau-Lifshitz-Bloch (LLB)-based simulations [3] combined with a two temperature model to describe the effect of a realistic femtosecond laser pulse. The ferrimagnetic properties of GdFeCo are included by a self-consistent mean-field approximation [4] to get the temperature dependent input parameters for the LLB equations. We will discuss the parameters under which opto-magnetic switching is possible and the influence of the ferrimagnetic compensation point on the switching process.
[1] C. D. Stanciu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 047601 (2007) [2] K. Vahaplar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 117201 (2009) [3] N. Kazantseva et al., Phys. Rev. B 77, 184428 (2008) [4] A. Gangulee, et al., J. Appl. Phys. 49, 4896 (1978)