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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 41: Focus: All-optical magnetic switching

MA 41.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, March 19, 2015, 09:30–10:15, H 1012

Optically-induced magnetisation switching: Experiments and models — •Hans Christian Schneider — Physics Department, University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

This talk will present a general overview of optically induced magnetic switching in multi-sublattice magnets. Apart from reviewing experimental results, it will try to set the stage for the following talks by giving an introduction to the different mechanisms that contribute to optically induced magnetization dynamics in general. The different models that are nowadays applied to explain magnetization dynamics (or its crucial mechanism) during optical switching will be reviewed with a particular focus on the angular-momentum balance, and an attempt will be made to identify the remaining ``mysteries'' connected with all-optical switching. For the inverse Faraday effect the basic concepts that have been originally developed for semiconductors will be compared with more recent theoretical approaches.

Finally, we characterize conditions for heat-induced magnetic switching, and discuss its physical mechanism in a generic two-sublattice toy model, which includes dynamical exchange and electron-phonon scattering in the band picture.