News

Ursula Keller wins “Swiss Nobel” Marcel Benoist Prize- for pioneering work in ultrafast lasers

Farewell: the NCCR MUST ended - on June 30, 2022

MUST2022 Conference- a great success!

New scientific highlights- by MUST PIs Wörner, Chergui, and Richardson

FELs of Europe prize for Jeremy Rouxel- “Development or innovative use of advanced instrumentation in the field of FELs”

Ruth Signorell wins Doron prizefor pioneering contributions to the field of fundamental aerosol science

New FAST-Fellow Uwe Thumm at ETH- lectures on Topics in Femto- and Attosecond Science

International Day of Women and Girls in Science- SSPh asked female scientists about their experiences

New scientific highlight- by MUST PIs Milne, Standfuss and Schertler

EU XFEL Young Scientist Award for Camila Bacellar,beamline scientist and group leader of the Alvra endstation at SwissFEL

Prizes for Giulia Mancini and Rebeca Gomez CastilloICO/IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics & Ernst Haber 2021

Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to RESOLV Member Benjamin List- for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis

Hans Jakob Wörner invited to give the „New Horizons Solvay Lectures” - online, October 5, 12 and 19

Unusual keynote talk at an international scientific conference- Do photons show gender bias?

NCCR MUST at Scientifica 2021- Lightning, organic solar cells, and virtual molecules

Christoph Hauri and co-workers: Magnetization Controlled at Picosecond Intervals

August 11, 2013

Magnetisation controlled at picosecond intervals

A terahertz laser developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute makes it possible to control a material’s magnetisation at a timescale of picoseconds (0.000 000 000 001 seconds). In their experiment, the researchers shone extremely short light pulses from the laser onto a magnetic material, where the magnetic moments – “elementary magnets” – were all aligned in parallel. The light pulse’s magnetic field was able to deflect the magnetic moments from their idle state in such a way that they exactly followed the change of the laser’s magnetic field with only a minor delay. The terahertz laser used in the experiment is one of the strongest of its kind in the world. One special feature is the fact that it is phase-stable, which enables the exact change in the electrical and magnetic field within the individual pulses to be defined reliably for each laser pulse. As the majority of data is stored magnetically these days, the possibility to quickly change a material’s magnetisation is crucial for new, rapid storage systems. The researchers report on their results in the journal Nature Photonics.

Publication: Off-resonant magnetization dynamics phase-locked to an intense phase-stable terahertz transient. C. Vicario, C. Ruchert, F. Ardana-Lamas, P. M. Derlet, B. Tudu, J. Luning & C. P. Hauri (2013) Nature Photonics, doi:10.1038/nphoton.2013.209

Figure: A pulse from a terahertz laser (blue) controls the magnetisation of a material: the magnetisation (red - determined via the magneto-optic Kerr effect MOKE) follows the laser pulse’s magnetic field with a slight delay. The black curve shows the prediction of a computer simulation.

News items in:
Science Daily: Magnetization Controlled at Picosecond Intervals
Krone (Austria, in German): Forscher arbeiten an blitzschnellen Festplatten
Science@ORF (Austrian television, in German): Material blitzschnell magnetisiert
Pro-Physik.de (in German): Im Pikosekundentakt magnetisieren
Science World report: Experiments With Strongest Terahertz Laser Yield Ultrafast Magnetization Milestone

<<