No Arabic abstract
We report the detection of a magnetic resonance mode in multiferroic Ba0.6Sr1.4Zn2Fe12O22 using time domain pump-probe reflectance spectroscopy. Magnetic sublattice precession is coherently excited via picosecond thermal modification of the exchange energy. Importantly, this precession is recorded as a change in reflectance caused by the dynamic magnetoelectric effect. Thus, transient reflectance provides a sensitive probe of magnetization dynamics in materials with strong magnetoelectric coupling, such as multiferroics, revealing new possibilities for application in spintronics and ultrafast manipulation of magnetic moments.
Robust engineering of phonon squeezed states in optically excited solids has emerged as a promising tool to control and manipulate their properties. However, in contrast to quantum optical systems, detection of phonon squeezing is subtle and elusive, and an important question is what constitutes an unambiguous signature of it. The state of the art involves observing oscillations at twice the phonon frequency in time resolved measurements of the out of equilibrium phonon fluctuation. Using Keldysh formalism we show that such a signal is a necessary but not a sufficient signature of a squeezed phonon, since we identify several mechanisms that do not involve squeezing and yet which produce similar oscillations. We show that a reliable detection requires a time and frequency resolved measurement of the phonon spectral function.
We explore the influence of the nanoporous structure on the thermal relaxation of electrons and holes excited by ultrashort laser pulses ($sim 7$ fs) in thin gold films. Plasmon decay into hot electron-hole pairs results in the generation of a Fermi-Dirac distribution thermalized at a temperature $T_{mathrm{e}}$ higher than the lattice temperature $T_{mathrm{l}}$. The relaxation times of the energy exchange between electrons and lattice, here measured by pump-probe spectroscopy, is slowed down by the nanoporous structure, resulting in much higher peak $T_{mathrm{e}}$ than for bulk gold films. The electron-phonon coupling constant and the Debye temperature are found to scale with the metal filling factor $f$ and a two-temperature model reproduces the data. The results open the way for electron temperature control in metals by engineering of the nanoporous geometry.
Time-resolved spectroscopies using intense THz pulses appear as a promising tool to address collective electronic excitations in condensed matter. In particular recent experiments showed the possibility to selectively excite collective modes emerging across a phase transition, as it is the case for superconducting and charge-density-wave (CDW) systems. One possible signature of these excitations is the emergence of coherent oscillations of the differential probe field in pump-probe protocols. While the analogy with the case of phonon modes suggests that the basic underlying mechanism should be a sum-frequency stimulated Raman process, a general theoretical scheme able to describe the experiments and to define the relevant optical quantity is still lacking. Here we provide this scheme by showing that coherent oscillations as a function of the pump-probe time delay can be linked to the convolution in the frequency domain between the squared pump field and a Raman-like non-linear optical kernel. This approach is applied and discussed in few paradigmatic examples: ordinary phonons in an insulator, and collective charge and Higgs fluctuations across a superconducting and a CDW transition. Our results not only account very well for the existing experimental data in a wide variety of systems, but they also offer an useful perspective to design future experiments in emerging materials.
The magnetization orientation of a nanoscale ferromagnet can be manipulated using an electric current via the spin transfer effect. Time domain measurements of nanopillar devices at low temperatures have directly shown that magnetization dynamics and reversal occur coherently over a timescale of nanoseconds. By adjusting the shape of a spin torque waveform over a timescale comparable to the free precession period (100-400 ps), control of the magnetization dynamics in nanopillar devices should be possible. Here we report coherent control of the free layer magnetization in nanopillar devices using a pair of current pulses as narrow as 30 ps with adjustable amplitudes and delay. We show that the switching probability can be tuned over a broad range by timing the current pulses with the underlying free-precession orbits, and that the magnetization evolution remains coherent for more than 1 ns even at room temperature. Furthermore, we can selectively induce transitions along free-precession orbits and thereby manipulate the free magnetic moment motion. We expect this technique will be adopted for further elucidating the dynamics and dissipation processes in nanomagnets, and will provide an alternative for spin torque driven spintronic devices, such as resonantly pumping microwave oscillators, and ultimately, for efficient reversal of memory bits in magnetic random access memory (MRAM).
High-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and ultrafast optical pump-probe spectroscopy were used to study semimetallic 1T - TiTe2 quasiparticle dispersion and dynamics. A kink and a flat band, having the same energy scale and temperature-dependent behaviors along the G-M direction, were detected. Both manifested at low temperatures but blurred as temperature increased. The kink was formed by an electron-phonon coupling. And the localized flat band might be closely related to an electron-phonon coupling. Ultrafast optical spectroscopy identified multiple distinct time scales in the 10-300 K range. Quantitative analysis of the fastest decay process evidenced a significant lifetime temperature dependence at high temperatures, while this starts to change slowly below ~ 100 K where an anomalous Hall coefficient occurred. At low temperature, a coherent A1g phonon mode with a frequency of ~ 4.36 THz was extracted. Frequency temperature dependence suggests that phonon hardening occurs as temperature falls and anharmonic effects can explain it. Frequency fluence dependence indicates that the phonons soften as fluence increases.