Dresden 2026 – scientific programme
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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 14: PhD Focus Session: What about the lattice? Lessons from (ultrafast) magnetism
MA 14.5: Invited Talk
Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 12:05–12:35, HSZ/0002
Atomistic simulations of ultrafast spin-lattice dynamics — •Richard Evans1 and Mara Strungaru2 — 1University of York, York, United Kingdom — 2University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Atomistic spin dynamics (ASD) has become a standard method for studying finite temperature processes in magnetic materials and devices. In some systems, such as magnetic insulators, coupled spin-lattice dynamics can play a dominant role in the thermal and dynamic properties that have so far been neglected in spin-only models. Recent exciting results in ultrafast dynamics have shown that the spin-lattice interaction is a critically important component to the physical properties of a magnetic material. Spin-Lattice Dynamics (SLD) is a relatively recent theoretical development aiming to directly couple an atomistic spin model with a molecular dynamics solver to incorporate the fascinating and complicated dynamics of these coupled systems into a practical numerical framework. In this talk I will introduce the theoretical background and numerical methods for SLD as recently implemented in the VAMPIRE software package, including its parallelisation and scalability on the UK National Supercomputer ARCHER2. I will present recent results on coherent ultrafast THz switching where we found that it is possible to induce magnetic switching through a coherent phonon excitation. I will conclude with a brief perspective on open problems in spin-lattice dynamics, including numerical challenges, quantum thermostats and correlated noise, and how to model electron processes in metallic magnetic systems.
Keywords: Atomistic spin models; Spin-lattice dynamics; Ultrafast spin dynamics; THz