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This article reviews static and dynamic interfacial effects in magnetism, focusing on interfacially-driven magnetic effects and phenomena associated with spin-orbit coupling and intrinsic symmetry breaking at interfaces. It provides a historical background and literature survey, but focuses on recent progress, identifying the most exciting new scientific results and pointing to promising future research directions. It starts with an introduction and overview of how basic magnetic properties are affected by interfaces, then turns to a discussion of charge and spin transport through and near interfaces and how these can be used to control the properties of the magnetic layer. Important concepts include spin accumulation, spin currents, spin transfer torque, and spin pumping. An overview is provided to the current state of knowledge and existing review literature on interfacial effects such as exchange bias, exchange spring magnets, spin Hall effect, oxide heterostructures, and topological insulators. The article highlights recent discoveries of interface-induced magnetism and non-collinear spin textures, non-linear dynamics including spin torque transfer and magnetization reversal induced by interfaces, and interfacial effects in ultrafast magnetization processes.

A pair of circularly polarized laser pulses of opposite helicities are shown to control the route of spin reorientation phase transition in the rare-earth antiferromagnetic orthoferrite (Sm0.55Tb0.45)FeO3. The route can be efficiently controlled by the delay between the pulses and the sample temperature. Simulations employing previously published models of laser-induced spin dynamics in orthoferrites failed to reproduce the experimental results. We suggest that the failure is due to neglected temperature dependence of the antiferromagnetic resonance damping in the material. Taking into account the experimentally deduced temperature dependence of the damping, we obtained good agreement between the simulations and the experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controlled generation of coherent spin waves with highest possible frequencies and shortest possible wavelengths is a cornerstone of spintronics and magnonics. Here, using Heisenberg antiferromagnet RbMnF3, we demonstrate that laser-induced THz spin dynamics corresponding to pairs of mutually coherent counter-propagating spin waves with the wavevectors up to the edge of the Brillouin zone cannot be understood in terms of magnetization and antiferromagnetic (Néel) vectors, conventionally used to describe spin waves. Instead, we propose to model such spin dynamics using the spin correlation function. We derive a quantum-mechanical equation of motion for the latter and emphasize that unlike the magnetization and antiferromagnetic vectors the spin correlations in antiferromagnets do not exhibit inertia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using diffraction of femtosecond laser pulses of visible light by a magnetic domain pattern in an iron garnet, we demonstrate a proof of concept of time-resolved measurements of domain pattern movements with nanometer spatial and femtosecond temporal resolution. In this method, a femtosecond laser (pump) pulse initiates magnetization dynamics in a sample that is initially in a labyrinth domain state, while an equally short linearly polarized laser pulse (probe) is diffracted by the domain pattern. The components of the diffracted light that are polarized orthogonally to the incident light generate several concentric diffraction rings. Nanometer small changes in the relative sizes of domains with opposite magnetization result in observable changes in the intensities of the rings. We demonstrate that the signal-to-noise ratio is high enough to detect a 6 nm domain wall displacement with 100 fs temporal resolution using visible light. We also discuss possible artifacts, such as pump-induced changes of optical properties, that can affect the measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CoPS3 stands out in the family of the van der Waals antiferromagnets XPS3 (X = Mn, Ni, Fe, and Co) due to the unquenched orbital momentum of the magnetic Co2+ ions, which is known to facilitate the coupling of spins to both electromagnetic waves and lattice vibrations. Here, using a time-resolved magneto-optical pump–probe technique, we experimentally study the ultrafast laser-induced dynamics of mutually correlated spins and lattice. It is shown that a femtosecond laser pulse acts as an ultrafast heater and, thus, results in the melting of the antiferromagnetic order. At the same time, the resonant pumping of the 4T1g → 4T2g electronic transition in Co2+ ions effectively changes their orbital momentum, giving rise to a mechanical force that moves the ions in the direction parallel to the orientation of their spins, thus generating a coherent Bg phonon mode at the frequency of about 4.7 THz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Usually, the presence of multiple eigenstates (magnons and phonons) in a system makes it difficult to analyze the coupled excitation mechanism using conventional single-pulse terahertz (THz) spectroscopy. On the contrary, 2D THz spectroscopy reveals energy flows between these states, which facilitates the identification of the coupled dynamics. In this article, we provide a theoretical description of this advanced technique and an experimental demonstration of its performance in antiferromagnet CoF2. Here, 2D THz spectroscopy shows that the THz pulse induces energy transfer from the magnon mode to the Raman-active phonon mode via a nonlinear excitation pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intense THz pulse excites a high-Q magnetic resonance mode in the antiferromagnetic insulator HoFeO3 by the THz Zeeman torque. By using magneto-optical detection and sweeping the temperature, we observed an anomalous beating in the magnon dynamics for certain temperatures. The beating originates from the formation of cavity magnon-polaritons upon the intersection of the antiferromagnetic resonance frequency with the frequencies of the Fabry–Pérot modes inside the etalon formed by the sample cavity in the weak coupling limit. The validity of this idea is demonstrated by simulations using Maxwell's equations. Furthermore, the observed beating pattern depends on the polarization of the probe pulse. This dependence can be reproduced in the simulations by considering an imaginary Verdet constant, which could be a result of an interplay between the magneto-optical Faraday effect and static linear birefringence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultrafast laser-induced dynamics in a ferrimagnetic gadolinium iron cobalt (Gd/FeCo) multilayer with a magnetization compensation temperature of TM = 320 K is studied at room temperature as a function of laser-fluence and strength of the applied magnetic field. The dynamics is found to be substantially different from that in archetypical GdFeCo alloys, and depending on the laser fluence one can distinguish two different regimes. At low laser fluence (≤1.6 mJ cm-2), ultrafast laser excitation of the medium triggers spin precession of an extraordinary large amplitude reaching over 30°. At high laser fluence (≥2.2 mJ cm-2), the pump heats the medium over the magnetization compensation point, spin precession reduces significantly in amplitude and the process of field-assisted reversal of magnetization of Gd and FeCo is launched. It is argued that such a distinctly different laser-induced magnetization dynamics in the multilayers compared to the alloys is due to the symmetry breaking at the numerous interfaces, giving rise to additional surface anisotropy. The temperature dependence of the latter is found to be the key ingredient in the mechanism of ultrafast laser-induced magnetization dynamics in ferrimagnetic multilayers. Controlling the amount and properties of interfaces in multilayers can thus serve as a mean to achieve efficient ultrafast all-optical control of magnetism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing polarization sensitive terahertz (THz) transmission spectroscopy, we explored how the waveform of initially single-cycle linearly polarized THz pulses changes upon propagation through a thick antiferromagnetic crystal of CoF2. The changes upon propagation through CoF2 are found to depend strongly on both the incoming polarization and temperature. In particular, the ellipticity and polarization rotation acquired by initially linearly polarized light are quantified and explained in terms of magnetic linear birefringence and dichroism. Although the magneto-optical effects are often considered to be relatively weak, our experiments reveal that the polarization of the THz pulse substantially changes along the pulse duration. The pulse shape is further complicated by features assigned to the formation of magnon-polaritons. The findings clearly show the importance of accounting for propagation effects in antiferromagnetic spintronics and magnonics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate an approach to parallel all-optical writing of magnetic domains using spatial and temporal interference of two ultrashort light pulses. We explore how the fluence and grating periodicity of the optical transient grating influence the size and uniformity of the written bits. Using a total incident optical energy of 3.5 μJ, we demonstrate the capability of simultaneously writing 102 spatially separated bits, each featuring a relevant lateral width of ∼1 μm. We discuss viable routes to extend this technique to write individually addressable, sub-diffraction-limited magnetic domains in a wide range of materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review summarizes the recent progress in laser-induced magnetization dynamics, in particular, the direct nonthermal opto-magnetic excitation of spin systems. Circularly polarized pulses are shown to act as strong transient magnetic field pulses originating from the nonabsorptive inverse Faraday effect. An all-optical scheme of excitation and detection of different antiferromagnetic resonance modes with frequencies of several hundred gigahertz is demonstrated, along with a straightforward method to separate the thermal and nonthermal excitation effects. Such a method could also be applied to metals, such as rare-earth-transition metal alloys. In the latter, moreover, the magnetization could be reversed in a reproducible manner by single 40 fs circularly polarized laser pulses, without any applied magnetic field. All these findings open new insights into the understanding of ultrafast magnetic excitation and, considering recent progress in the development of compact ultrafast lasers, may provide new prospects for applications of ultrafast opto-magnetic phenomena in magnetic storage and information processing technology. Index Terms--Magneto-optics, time-resolved optical spectroscopy, ultrafast magnetization dynamics.

Author(s): A. V. Kimel [1]; A. Kirilyuk [1]; A. Tsvetkov [1]; R. V. Pisarev [2]; Th. Rasing (corresponding author) [1] All magnetically ordered materials can be divided into two primary [...]