Condensed Matter > Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
[Submitted on 22 Aug 2025]
Title:Ultrafast Laser-Induced Magnetic Relaxation in Artificial Spin Ice Driven by Dipolar Interactions
View PDFAbstract:It is of great interest to develop methods to rapidly and effectively control the magnetic configurations in artificial spin ices, which are arrangements of dipolar coupled nanomagnets that have a variety of fascinating collective magnetic phenomena associated with them. This is not only valuable in terms of acquiring fundamental understanding but is also important for future high-performance applications. Here, we demonstrate ultrafast control of magnetic relaxation in square artificial spin ice through femtosecond laser pulsed excitation, enabling rapid access to low-energy states via dipolar interactions. Time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements reveal that, after laser-induced demagnetization, the magnetization recovers within picoseconds. During this brief transient window, dipolar coupling drives a collective magnetic ordering. Ex-situ magnetic force microscopy confirms the emergence of extended Type I vertex domains, characteristic of ground-state ordering, thus establishing ultrafast laser-driven relaxation as a route to attain the low-energy states. Through complementary energy barrier calculations and micromagnetic simulations incorporating Landau-Lifshitz-Bloch dynamics, we elucidate the underlying mechanism: transient ultrafast demagnetization followed by rapid remagnetization that enables a dipolar-driven collective rearrangement. Moreover, a tailored decreasing-fluence laser annealing protocol is shown to enhance ground-state ordering, consistently achieving over 92% ground-state vertex populations. This work opens the way to ultrafast and spatially selective control of magnetic states in artificial spin ice for spin-based computation and memory technologies, and highlights the critical interplay of thermal fluctuations, magnetostatic coupling, and transient magnetization dynamics.
Submission history
From: Valerio Scagnoli [view email][v1] Fri, 22 Aug 2025 09:03:55 UTC (2,226 KB)
Current browse context:
cond-mat.mes-hall
Change to browse by:
References & Citations
export BibTeX citation
Loading...
Bibliographic and Citation Tools
Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)
Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)
Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)
scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)
Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article
alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)
CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)
DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)
Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)
Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)
Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?)
ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)
Demos
Recommenders and Search Tools
Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)
CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)
IArxiv Recommender
(What is IArxiv?)
arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators
arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.
Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.
Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.