Judicial Legitimacy and the Dearth of State Supreme Court Knowledge

As western democracies face challenges unseen since the Cold War ended, understanding the correlates of legitimacy for democratic institutions has grown in importance. While scholars have well-developed theories and empirical evidence of Supreme Court support, we know far less about state supreme court legitimacy. This is despite the fact that these courts hand down 100,000 legal decisions annually. Relying on an original survey conducted with participants in 46 states, I develop and test a theory that respondents rely on the Supreme Court as a cue when deciding whether they should extend legitimacy to state supreme courts they know next to nothing about. With this foundation, I examine several questions: First, how little do respondents know about state supreme courts and how does this ignorance influence the likelihood that they will extend legitimacy to these important institutions? Second, does the United States Supreme Court act as a heuristic for respondents who know little about their state supreme court when they are asked to decide whether they should extend legitimacy to state high courts? Third, does the recency of a state supreme court election alter any reliance on the Supreme Court as a heuristic informing state supreme court legitimacy among those with low knowledge of state high courts

Spin-photo-currents generated by femtosecond laser pulses in a ferrimagnetic GdFeCo/Pt bilayer

© 2017 Author(s). Using THz emission spectroscopy, we detect spin-photo-currents from a ferrimagnetic amorphous alloy GdFeCo to an adjacent Pt capping layer. The currents are generated upon excitation of a GdFeCo/Pt heterostructure with femtosecond laser pulses. It is found that the polarization of the spin-polarized current is determined by magnetic sublattice sensitivity rather than the total magnetization, allowing for spin-polarized current generation when the net magnetization is zero

Femtosecond control of electric currents at the interfaces of metallic ferromagnetic heterostructures

The idea to utilize not only the charge but also the spin of electrons in the operation of electronic devices has led to the development of spintronics, causing a revolution in how information is stored and processed. A novel advancement would be to develop ultrafast spintronics using femtosecond laser pulses. Employing terahertz (10$^{12}$ Hz) emission spectroscopy, we demonstrate optical generation of spin-polarized electric currents at the interfaces of metallic ferromagnetic heterostructures at the femtosecond timescale. The direction of the photocurrent is controlled by the helicity of the circularly polarized light. These results open up new opportunities for realizing spintronics in the unprecedented terahertz regime and provide new insights in all-optical control of magnetism.Comment: 3 figures and 2 tables in the main tex

Magnetisation switching of FePt nanoparticle recording medium by femtosecond laser pulses

Manipulation of magnetisation with ultrashort laser pulses is promising for information storage device applications. The dynamics of the magnetisation response depends on the energy transfer from the photons to the spins during the initial laser excitation. A material of special interest for magnetic storage are FePt nanoparticles, for which switching of the magnetisation with optical angular momentum was demonstrated recently. The mechanism remained unclear. Here we investigate experimentally and theoretically the all-optical switching of FePt nanoparticles. We show that the magnetisation switching is a stochastic process. We develop a complete multiscale model which allows us to optimize the number of laser shots needed to switch the magnetisation of high anisotropy FePt nanoparticles in our experiments. We conclude that only angular momentum induced optically by the inverse Faraday effect will provide switching with one single femtosecond laser pulse.EC under Contract No. 281043, FemtoSpin. The work at Greifswald University was supported by the German research foundation (DFG), projects MU MU 1780/8-1, MU 1780/10-1. Research at Göttingen University was supported via SFB 1073, Projects A2 and B1. Research at Uppsala University was supported by the Swedish Research Council (VR), the Röntgen-Ångström Cluster, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation (Contract No. 2015.0060), and Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC). Research at Kiel University was supported by the DFG, projects MC 9/9-2, MC 9/10-2. P.N. acknowledges support from EU Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020) under Grant Agreement No. 686056, NOVAMAG. The work in Konstanz was supported via the Center for Applied Photonics

Cryogen spray cooling of human skin: Effects of ambient humidity level, spraying distance, and cryogen boiling point

Recent studies have shown spray cooling of the skin surface with millisecond cryogen spurts to be an effective method for protecting the epidermis from non-specific thermal injury during various laser mediated dermatological procedures. We have investigated the effects of ambient humidity level, spraying distance, and cryogen boiling point on the resulting radiometric surface temperature. Our findings indicate that: 1) decreasing the ambient humidity level results in less ice formation on the skin surface without altering the radiometric surface temperature during a cryogen spurt; 2) increasing the spraying distance to 85 mm lowers the radiometric surface temperature; and 3) boiling point of the cryogen does not directly affect the surface temperature in the geometries studied

Cryogen spray cooling of human skin: Effects of ambient humidity level, spraying distance, and cryogen boiling point

Recent studies have shown spray cooling of the skin surface with millisecond cryogen spurts to be an effective method for protecting the epidermis from non-specific thermal injury during various laser mediated dermatological procedures. We have investigated the effects of ambient humidity level, spraying distance, and cryogen boiling point on the resulting radiometric surface temperature. Our findings indicate that: 1) decreasing the ambient humidity level results in less ice formation on the skin surface without altering the radiometric surface temperature during a cryogen spurt; 2) increasing the spraying distance to 85 mm lowers the radiometric surface temperature; and 3) boiling point of the cryogen does not directly affect the surface temperature in the geometries studied

Coherent terahertz control of antiferromagnetic spin waves

Ultrafast charge and spin excitations in the elusive terahertz regime1, 2 of the electromagnetic spectrum play a pivotal role in condensed matter3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13. The electric field of free-space terahertz pulses has provided a direct gateway to manipulating the motion of charges on the femtosecond timescale6, 7, 8, 9. Here, we complement this process by showing that the magnetic component of intense terahertz transients enables ultrafast control of the spin degree of freedom. Single-cycle terahertz pulses switch on and off coherent spin waves in antiferromagnetic NiO at frequencies as high as 1 THz. An optical probe pulse with a duration of 8 fs follows the terahertz-induced magnetic dynamics directly in the time domain and verifies that the terahertz field addresses spins selectively by means of the Zeeman interaction. This concept provides a universal ultrafast means to control previously inaccessible magnetic excitations in the electronic ground state

Antiferromagnetic opto-spintronics

Control and detection of spin order in ferromagnets is the main principle allowing storing and reading of magnetic information in nowadays technology. The large class of antiferromagnets, on the other hand, is less utilized, despite its very appealing features for spintronics applications. For instance, the absence of net magnetization and stray fields eliminates crosstalk between neighbouring devices and the absence of a primary macroscopic magnetization makes spin manipulation in antiferromagnets inherently faster than in ferromagnets. However, control of spins in antiferromagnets requires exceedingly high magnetic fields, and antiferromagnetic order cannot be detected with conventional magnetometry. Here we provide an overview and illustrative examples of how electromagnetic radiation can be used for probing and modification of the magnetic order in antiferromagnets. Spin pumping from antiferromagnets, propagation of terahertz spin excitations, and tracing the reversal of the antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric order parameter in multiferroics are anticipated to be among the main topics defining the future of this field.Comment: Part of a collection of reviews on antiferromagnetic spintronics; 26 pages, 7 figure