Optically induced ferro and antiferromagnetic dynamics in the rare earth metal dysprosium

Approaching physical limits in speed and size of today s magnetic storage and processing technologies demands new concepts for controlling magnetization and moves researches on optically induced magnetic dynamics. Studies on photoinduced magnetization dynamics and their underlying mechanisms have been primarily performed on ferromagnetic metals. Ferromagnetic dynamics bases on transfer of the conserved angular momentum connected with atomic magnetic moments out of the parallel aligned magnetic system into other degrees of freedom. In this thesis the so far rarely studied response of antiferromagnetic order to ultra short optical laser pulses in a metal is investigated. The experiments were performed at the FemtoSpex slicing facility at the storage ring BESSY II, an unique source for ultra short elliptically polarized x ray pulses. Laser induced changes of the 4f magnetic order parameter in ferro and antiferromagnetic dysprosium Dy , were studied by x ray methods, which yield directly comparable quantities. The discovered fundamental differences in the temporal and spatial behavior of ferro and antiferrmagnetic dynamics are assinged to an additional channel for angular momentum transfer, which reduces the antiferromagnetic order by redistributing angular momentum within the non parallel aligned magnetic system, and hence conserves the zero net magnetization. It is shown that antiferromagnetic dynamics proceeds considerably faster and more energy efficient than demagnetization in ferromagnets. By probing antiferromagnetic order in time and space, it is found to be affected along the whole sample depth of an in situ grown 73 nm tick Dy film. Interatomic transfer of angular momentum via fast diffusion of laser excited 5d electrons is held responsible for the out most long ranging effect. Ultrafast ferromagnetic dynamics can be expected to base on the same origin, which however leads to demagnetization only in regions close to interfaces caused by super diffusive spin transport. Dynamics due to local scattering processes of excited but less mobile electrons, occur in both magnetic alignments only in directly excited regions of the sample and on slower pisosecond timescales. The thesis provides fundamental insights into photoinduced magnetic dynamics by directly comparing ferro and antiferromagnetic dynamics in the same material and by consideration of the laser induced magnetic depth profil