New Nano Letter “Ab Initio Study of Helicity-Dependent Light-Induced Demagnetization: From the Optical Regime to the Extreme Ultraviolet Regime”
In collaboration with the “Laboratoire de physique et chimie théoriques” and the Max Born Institute, we theoretically investigated the effect of optical and extreme ultraviolet (XUV) circularly polarized femtosecond pulses on the magnetization dynamics of ferromagnetic materials. Relying on real-time time-dependent density functional theory, we demonstrated that the light induces a helicity-dependent reduction of the magnitude of the magnetization. We were able to separate the part of the helicity-dependent dynamics due to the absorption from the part due to the inverse Faraday effect. It revealed that the former has, overall, a greater impact on the magnetization than the latter, especially after the pulse and in the XUV regime.
This work hints at the yet experimentally unexplored territory of the XUV light-induced helicity-dependent dynamics, which, according to our prediction, could magnify the helicity-dependent dynamics already exhibited in the optical regime.
