Electron-phonon mediated spin-flip as driving mechanism for ultrafast magnetization dynamics in 3$d$ ferromagnets

Abstract

Despite intense experimental effort, theoretical proposals and modeling approaches, a lack of consensus exists about the intrinsic mechanisms driving ultrafast magnetization dynamics in 3$d$ ferromagnets. In this work, we find evidence of electron-phonon mediated spin-flip as the driving mechanism for the ultrafast magnetization dynamics in all three 3$d$ ferromagnets; nickel, iron and cobalt. We use a microscopic three temperature model with parameters calculated from first-principles, which has been validated by direct comparison to the electron and lattice dynamics extracted from previous experiments. By direct comparison to the experimentally measured magnetization dynamics for different laser fluence, we determine the spin-flip probability of each material. In contrast to previous findings but in agreement to ab-initio predictions, we find that relatively small values of the spin-flip probability enable ultrafast demagnetization in all three 3$d$ ferromagnets.