Ultrafast Spin Manulupation in Ferromagnetic Thin Films and Heterostructures

Ultrafast laser induced spin dynamics offers a new paradigm of spintronics where the dynamics of individual spin to collective spin dynamics can be excited and probed by a single experiment spanning from femtosecond to nanoscecond timescale. These include ultrafast demagnetization, relaxation, precession, damping and generation of spin waves, owing to discrete physical phenomena and propounding applications in separate domains like all-optical memory, precessional switching, spin-orbitronics and magnonics. Despite their different timescales and underlying mechanisms, they must be connected by some common thread. Dr. Anjan Barman will talk about the correlation between ultrafast demagnetization and relaxation with precessional dynamics and damping in the quest of understanding the underlying mechanisms. He will elaborate on the findings that both spin-flip scattering and spin (thermal) transport processes play key roles in the ultrafast demagnetization and their contributions can be controlled by various external parameters in ferromagnetic thin films and heterostructures.