Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 38: Magnetization Dynamics IV

MA 38.6: Talk

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 16:00–16:15, HSZ 403

The Driving Force of Ultrafast Demagnetization Dynamics — •Benedikt Müller, Mirko Cinchetti, Tobias Roth, Martin Aeschlimann, and Bärbel Rethfeld — University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Irradiating a ferromagnetic material with an ultrashort laser pulse leads to a demagnetization process on a femtosecond timescale. Elliott-Yafet type scattering is one of the most invoked spin-flip mechanisms to give a microscopic description of such behavior. In particular, electron-electron (el-el) [1] and electron-phonon (el-ph) [2] spin-flip scattering have been considered. We combined the basic ingredients of those two models. In the framework of a spin-resolved Boltzmann equation [3] this allows us to evaluate the relative importance of Elliott-Yafet-type spin-flip scattering and to identify the driving force for ultrafast demagnetization: The equilibration of temperatures and chemical potentials of the introduced spin-up and spin-down electronic systems.

[1] M. Krauss et al., Phys. Ref. B 80, 180407 (2009)

[2] B. Koopmans et al., Nature Materials 9, 3 (2010)

[3] B. Rethfeld et al., Phys. Ref. B 65, 214303 (2002)