SKM 2021 – scientific programme
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SYAS: Symposium Attosecond and coherent spins: New frontiers
SYAS 1: Attosecond and Coherent Spins: New Frontiers
SYAS 1.2: Invited Talk
Thursday, September 30, 2021, 10:30–11:00, Audimax 2
Ultrafast spin, charge and nuclear dynamics: ab-initio description — •Sangeeta Sharma1 and John Kay Dewhurst2 — 1Max Born Institute Berlin — 2Max planck Institute Halle
Laser induced ultrafast dynamics is a burgeoning field of condensed matter physics promising the ultimate short time control of light over matter. From the outset of research into femtomagnetism, the field in which spins are manipulated by light on femtosecond or faster time scales, several questions have arisen and remain highly debated: How does the light interact with spin moments? How is the angular momentum conserved between the nuclei, spin, and angular momentum degrees of freedom during this interaction? What causes the ultrafast optical switching of magnetic structures from anti-ferromagnetic to ferromagnetic and back again? What is the ultimate time limit on the speed of spin manipulation? What is the impact of nuclear dynamics on the light-spin interaction?
In my talk I will advocate a parameter free ab-initio approach to treating ultrafast light-matter interactions, and discuss how this approach has led both to new answers to these old questions but also to the uncovering of novel and hitherto unsuspected early time spin dynamics phenomena. In particular I will demonstrate OISTR (optical inter-site spin transfer)[1,2] to be one of the fastest means of spin manipulation via light with changes in magnetic structure occurring on attosecond time scales. I will also discuss the impact of nuclear dynamics on laser induced spin dynamics and demonstrate how selective phonon modes can be used to enhance the OISTR effect.