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Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum

Ever since its discovery around a decade ago, all-optical magnetization switching (AOS) using femtosecond laser pulses has shown potential for future data storage and logic devices. In particular, single pulse helicity independent AOS in certain ferrimagnetic alloys and multilayers is highly efficie...

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Autores principales: van Hees, Youri L. W., van de Meugheuvel, Paul, Koopmans, Bert, Lavrijsen, Reinoud
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7395735/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32737310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17676-6
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author van Hees, Youri L. W.
van de Meugheuvel, Paul
Koopmans, Bert
Lavrijsen, Reinoud
author_facet van Hees, Youri L. W.
van de Meugheuvel, Paul
Koopmans, Bert
Lavrijsen, Reinoud
author_sort van Hees, Youri L. W.
collection PubMed
description Ever since its discovery around a decade ago, all-optical magnetization switching (AOS) using femtosecond laser pulses has shown potential for future data storage and logic devices. In particular, single pulse helicity independent AOS in certain ferrimagnetic alloys and multilayers is highly efficient and ultrafast. However, in most cases it is a toggle mechanism, which is not desirable for applications. Here we experimentally demonstrate conversion from toggle switching to a deterministic mechanism by biasing AOS in a Co/Gd bilayer with a spin polarized current which is optically generated in an adjacent ferromagnetic reference layer. We show deterministic writing of an ‘up’ and ‘down’ state using a sequence of one or two pulses, respectively, and demonstrate the non-local origin by varying the magnitude of the generated spin current. Our demonstration of deterministic magnetization writing could provide an essential step towards the implementation of future optically addressable spintronic memory devices.
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spelling pubmed-73957352020-08-18 Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum van Hees, Youri L. W. van de Meugheuvel, Paul Koopmans, Bert Lavrijsen, Reinoud Nat Commun Article Ever since its discovery around a decade ago, all-optical magnetization switching (AOS) using femtosecond laser pulses has shown potential for future data storage and logic devices. In particular, single pulse helicity independent AOS in certain ferrimagnetic alloys and multilayers is highly efficient and ultrafast. However, in most cases it is a toggle mechanism, which is not desirable for applications. Here we experimentally demonstrate conversion from toggle switching to a deterministic mechanism by biasing AOS in a Co/Gd bilayer with a spin polarized current which is optically generated in an adjacent ferromagnetic reference layer. We show deterministic writing of an ‘up’ and ‘down’ state using a sequence of one or two pulses, respectively, and demonstrate the non-local origin by varying the magnitude of the generated spin current. Our demonstration of deterministic magnetization writing could provide an essential step towards the implementation of future optically addressable spintronic memory devices. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC7395735/ /pubmed/32737310 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17676-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
van Hees, Youri L. W.
van de Meugheuvel, Paul
Koopmans, Bert
Lavrijsen, Reinoud
Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title_full Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title_fullStr Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title_full_unstemmed Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title_short Deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
title_sort deterministic all-optical magnetization writing facilitated by non-local transfer of spin angular momentum
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7395735/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32737310
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17676-6
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