Ultrafast antiferromagnet rearrangement in Co/IrMn/CoGd trilayers

Abstract

Antiferromagnets offer great potential for high-speed data processing applications, as they can lead spintronic devices from a static storage and gigahertz frequency range to the terahertz range. However, their zero net magnetization makes them difficult to manipulate and detect. In recent years, there has been a lot of attention given to the ultrafast manipulation of magnetic order using ultra-short single laser pulses, but it remains unknown whether a similar scenario can be observed in antiferromagnets. In this work, we demonstrate the manipulation of antiferromagnets with a single femtosecond laser pulse in perpendicular exchange-biased Co/IrMn/CoGd trilayers. We studied the dual exchange bias interlayer interaction in quasi-static conditions and competition in ultrafast antiferromagnet rearrangement. Our results show that, compared to conventional ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic systems, the IrMn antiferromagnet can be ultrafast and efficiently manipulated by the coupled CoGd ferrimagnetic layer, which paves the way for potential energy-efficient spintronic devices.

Second Harmonic Generation Versus Linear Magneto-Optical Response Studies of Laser-Induced Switching of Pinning Effects in Antiferromagnetic/Ferromagnetic Films

“…Laser pulse perturbation is found to modify the exchange bias as evidenced by the shift of the hysteresis loop with respect to the applied DC magnetic field as observed by the magneto-optical Kerr effect [11]. The modification of the exchange bias by means of intense laser beam irradiation of the magnetic AFM/FM structure looks attractive as the spatial region of this impact is comparable to the laser beam spot, which can be used for optical data writing and storage [13,[19][20][21][22][23].…”