Quality of Helicity-Dependent Magnetization Switching by Phonons

Abstract

Optical control of magnetization has emerged as a promising approach to achieve ultrafast and energy-efficient magnetization reversal. Here, we investigate helicity-dependent switching of magnetization driven by the resonant excitation of circularly-polarized transverse-optical phonons, using a polarization-modulated transient grating. Our results show that the polarized phonons within the sample substrate induce robust, helicity-defined magnetization reversal in the magnetic overlayer. Moreover, the quality of switching remains largely unaffected when the degree of ellipticity of the infrared excitation is varied at frequencies resonant with the targeted phonon modes. Conversely, as the excitation is moved slightly off-resonance, switching quality becomes highly sensitive to the ellipticity of the incident light.