Ultrafast optically induced spin transfer in ferromagnetic alloys

The vision of using light to manipulate electronic and spin excitations in materials on their fundamental time and length scales requires new approaches in experiment and theory to observe and understand these excitations. The ultimate speed limit for all-optical manipulation requires control schemes for which the electronic or magnetic subsystems of the materials are coherently manipulated on the time scale of the laser excitation pulse. In our work, we provide experimental evidence of such a direct, ultrafast, and coherent spin transfer between two magnetic subsystems of an alloy of Fe and Ni. Our experimental findings are fully supported by time-dependent density functional theory simulations and, hence, suggest the possibility of coherently controlling spin dynamics on subfemtosecond time scales, i.e., the birth of the research area of attomagnetism

Quantifying Spin Mixed States in Ferromagnets

We quantify the presence of spin mixed states in ferromagnetic 3D transition metals by precise measurement of the orbital moment. While central to phenomena such as Elliot Yafet scattering, quantification of the spin mixing parameter has hitherto been confined to theoretical calculations. We demonstrate that this information is also available by experimental means. Comparison of ferromagnetic resonance spectroscopy with x ray magnetic circular dichroism results show that Kittel s original derivation of the spectroscopic g factor requires modification, to include spin mixing of valence band states. Our results are supported by ab initio relativistic electronic structure theor

The energy bands of quantized spin waves and the uniaxial anisotropy in a biferromagnetic system

The eigenproblems of quantized spin waves in a (100) ferromagnetic bilayer system have been investigated theoretically using the interface rescaling approach. The energy-band structure of the system has been obtained and the effect of the uniaxial bulk anisotropy field of easy-axis type on the energy bands are explored thoroughly. It is found that all kinds of eigenmodes of the spin waves in the biferromagnetic system are determined by the bulk exchange coupling constant, the interface exchange coupling constant, the spin of lattice, the number of atomic layers and the uniaxial bulk anisotropy. Especially, we explore the effect of the uniaxial bulk anisotropy field of easy-axis type on the energy bands of first Brillouin zone and the existence condition of all kinds of the eigenmodes