The inverse Faraday effect is associated with light-induced magnetism. In nonmagnetic materials, the magnetic field scales with intensity; an electric field both produces surface charges and imparts momentum to those charges. The angular momentum of surface currents may induce a magnetic field, that is highly dependent on the shape nano-geometry. Here, we measure the Inverse Faraday Effect on nonmagnetic plasmonic nanodisks. We explore the effect of nanodisk aspect ratio. When the disk is thin, the plasmon resonance significantly red-shifts, which coincides with electron spillout.
Reducing energy dissipation while increasing speed in computation and memory is a long-standing challenge for spintronics research [1]. In the last 20 years, femtosecond lasers have emerged as a tool to control the magnetization in specific magnetic materials at the picosecond timescale [2]. However, the use of ultra-fast optics in integrated circuits and memories would require a major paradigm shift. An ultrafast electrical control of the magnetization [3] is far preferable for integrated systems. Here we demonstrate reliable and deterministic control of the out-of-plane magnetization of a 1 nm-thick Co layer with single 6 ps-wide electrical pulses that induce spin orbit torques on the magnetization. Due to the short duration of our pulses, we enter a counter-intuitive regime of switching where heat dissipation assists the reversal. These experiments prove that spintronic phenomena can be exploited on picosecond time-scales for full magnetic control.
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