A new, creative approach to switching magnetization

Many scientists around the world are studying how to switch magnetization more efficiently, since data centers – which rely on switching magnetic bits to store and record information – are consuming a frighteningly large amount of energy. With this in mind, the team led by Professor Andrei Kirilyuk devised a new, creative approach to switch magnetization.

It is based on the ultrafast analogue of the Barnett effect. Carl Davies, first-author of the publication, explains: “using infrared pulses of light from the free-electron lasers at FELIX, we drive circular vibrations of the lattice in glass or sapphire substrates. The substrate then becomes magnetic for a few trillionths of a second, flipping the magnetization of a thin layer mounted on top of it. The central role of the chiral phonons is revealed by the fact that the magnetic layer displayed switching only if specific lattice vibrations within in the underlying substrate are targeted.”

You can find the paper here: Phononic switching of magnetization by the ultrafast Barnett effect