Spin Oscillations in Antiferromagnetic NiO Triggered by Circularly Polarized Light

Takuya Satoh, Sung-Jin Cho, Ryugo Iida, Tsutomu Shimura, Kazuo Kuroda, Hiroaki Ueda, Yutaka Ueda, B. A. Ivanov, Franco Nori, and Manfred Fiebig

Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 077402 – Published 11 August 2010

Abstract

Coherent spin oscillations were nonthermally induced by circularly polarized pulses in the fully compensated antiferromagnet NiO. This effect is attributed to the action of the effective magnetic field generated by an inverse Faraday effect on the spins. The novelty of this mechanism is that spin oscillations are driven by the time derivative of the effective magnetic field which acts even on “pure” antiferromagnets with zero net magnetic moment in the ground state. The measured frequencies (1.07 THz and 140 GHz) correspond to the out-of-plane and in-plane modes of antiferromagnetic spin oscillations.

Received 2 December 2009

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.077402

Authors & Affiliations

Takuya Satoh¹, Sung-Jin Cho¹, Ryugo Iida¹, Tsutomu Shimura¹, Kazuo Kuroda¹, Hiroaki Ueda², Yutaka Ueda², B. A. Ivanov^3,4, Franco Nori^4,5, and Manfred Fiebig⁶

¹Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
²Institute for Solid State Physics, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8581, Japan
³Institute of Magnetism, Vernadskii Avenue 36B, 03142 Kiev, Ukraine
⁴RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama, 351-0198, Japan
⁵Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1040, USA
⁶HISKP, Universität Bonn, Nussallee 14-16, 53115 Bonn, Germany

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Issue

Vol. 105, Iss. 7 — 13 August 2010

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