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Article Dans Une Revue Nature Communications Année : 2012

Laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization in the presence of a nanoscale magnetic domain network

Guillaume Lambert
Stéphane Sebban
Philippe Zeitoun

Résumé

Femtosecond magnetization phenomena have been challenging our understanding for over a decade. Most experiments have relied on infrared femtosecond lasers, limiting the spatial resolution to a few micrometres. With the advent of femtosecond X-ray sources, nanometric resolution can now be reached, which matches key length scales in femtomagnetism such as the travelling length of excited 'hot' electrons on a femtosecond timescale. Here we study laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization in [Co/Pd]30 multilayer films, which, for the first time, achieves a spatial resolution better than 100 nm by using femtosecond soft X-ray pulses. This allows us to follow the femtosecond demagnetization process in a magnetic system consisting of alternating nanometric domains of opposite magnetization. No modification of the magnetic structure is observed, but, in comparison with uniformly magnetized systems of similar composition, we find a significantly faster demagnetization time. We argue that this may be caused by direct transfer of spin angular momentum between neighbouring domains.
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Dates et versions

hal-00743509 , version 1 (19-04-2013)

Identifiants

Citer

Boris Vodungbo, Julien Gautier, Guillaume Lambert, Anna Barszczak Sardinha, Magali Lozano, et al.. Laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization in the presence of a nanoscale magnetic domain network. Nature Communications, 2012, 3, pp.999. ⟨10.1038/ncomms2007⟩. ⟨hal-00743509⟩
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