Regensburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 77: Multiferroics
(Joint session of MA, DF, DS, KR and TT organized by MA)

TT 77.3: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 10. März 2016, 15:30–15:45, H34

Optical switching of multiferroic domains in TbMnO₃ — •Sebastian Manz¹, Masakazu Matsubara^1,2, Jonathan Büchi¹, Thomas Lottermoser¹, Ayato Iyama³, Tsuyoshi Kimura³, Dennis Meier¹, and Manfred Fiebig¹ — ¹Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland — ²Department of Physics, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8578, Japan — ³Division of Materials Physics, Osaka University, Osaka 560-8531, Japan

Multiferroics with spin-spiral-driven ferroelectricity possess a strong coupling between electric and magnetic domains, rendering them interesting for future technological devices. Controlling these domains on the local scale is an essential prerequisite, e. g. for data storage applications. Current discussions on spin-spiral multiferroics, however, focused on the conversion of one domain state into the other but reversible local manipulation has not been shown yet. As presently demonstrated in ferri- and ferromagnets, all-optical switching offers a promising route to achieve localized control. Here, we demonstrate spatially-resolved optical switching of antiferromagnetism in multiferroic TbMnO₃. We manipulate the antiferromagnetic order via the coupled ferroelectric state using a unique relation between the wavelength of the light and the induced polarization change. This allows us to realize reversible switching of multiferroic domains without any external bias fields. To further understand our results, we performed Monte-Carlo simulations which confirmed our findings. Our proof-of-principle experiments show that multiferroic domains and therefore domain walls can be generated and erased entirely optically on the local scale.