It is commonly assumed that recognition and discrimination of chirality, both in nature and in artificial systems, depend solely on spatial effects. However, recent studies have suggested that charge redistribution in chiral molecules manifests an enantiospecific preference in electron spin orientation. We therefore reasoned that the induced spin polarization may affect enantiorecognition through exchange interactions. Here we show experimentally that the interaction of chiral molecules with a perpendicularly magnetized substrate is enantiospecific. Thus, one enantiomer adsorbs preferentially when the magnetic dipole is pointing up, whereas the other adsorbs faster for the opposite alignment of the magnetization. The interaction is not controlled by the magnetic field per se, but rather by the electron spin orientations, and opens prospects for a distinct approach to enantiomeric separations.

Ferromagnets are commonly magnetized by either external magnetic fields or spin polarized currents. The manipulation of magnetization by spin-current occurs through the spin-transfer-torque effect, which is applied, for example, in modern magnetoresistive random access memory. However, the current density required for the spin-transfer torque is of the order of 1 × 106 A·cm−2, or about 1 × 1025 electrons s−1 cm−2. This relatively high current density significantly affects the devices' structure and performance. Here we demonstrate magnetization switching of ferromagnetic thin layers that is induced solely by adsorption of chiral molecules. In this case, about 1013 electrons per cm2 are sufficient to induce magnetization reversal. The direction of the magnetization depends on the handedness of the adsorbed chiral molecules. Local magnetization switching is achieved by adsorbing a chiral self-assembled molecular monolayer on a gold-coated ferromagnetic layer with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. These results present a simple low-power magnetization mechanism when operating at ambient conditions.

Abstract:Magnetization dynamics are strongly influenced by damping, namely the loss of spin angular momentum from the magnetic system to the lattice. An "effective" damping constant αeff is often determined experimentally from the spectral linewidth of the free induction decay of the magnetization after the system is excited to its non-equilibrium state. Such an αeff, however, reflects both intrinsic damping as well as inhomogeneous broadening that arises, for example, from spatial variations of the anisotropy field. In this paper we compare measurements of the magnetization dynamics in ultrathin non-epitaxial films having perpendicular magnetic anisotropy using two different techniques, timeresolved magneto optical Kerr effect (TRMOKE) and hybrid optical-electrical ferromagnetic resonance (OFMR). By using an external magnetic field that is applied at very small angles to the film plane in the TRMOKE studies, we develop an explicit closedform analytical expression for the TRMOKE spectral linewidth and show how this can be used to reliably extract the intrinsic Gilbert damping constant. The damping constant determined in this way is in excellent agreement with that determined from the OFMR method on the same samples. Our studies indicate that the asymptotic high-field approach that is often used in the TRMOKE method to distinguish the intrinsic damping from the 2 effective damping may result in significant error, because such high external magnetic fields are required to make this approach valid that they are out of reach. The error becomes larger the lower is the intrinsic damping constant, and thus may account for the anomalously high damping constants that are often reported in TRMOKE studies. In conventional ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) studies, inhomogeneous contributions can be readily distinguished from intrinsic damping contributions from the magnetic field dependence of the FMR linewidth. Using the analogous approach, we show how reliable values of the intrinsic damping can be extracted from TRMOKE in two distinct magnetic systems with significant perpendicular magnetic anisotropy: ultrathin CoFeB layers and Co/Ni/Co trilayers.3

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We report direct observations of Rabi oscillations and self-induced transparency in a quantum dot optical amplifier operating at room temperature. The experiments make use of pulses whose durations are shorter than the coherence time which are characterized using Cross-Frequency-Resolved Optical Gating. A numerical model which solves the Maxwell and Schrödinger equations and accounts for the inhomogeneously broadened nature of the quantum dot gain medium confirms the experimental results. The model is also used to explain the relationship between the observability of Rabi oscillations, the pulse duration and the homogeneous and inhomogeneous spectral widths of the semiconductor.

We describe a unique phenomenon occurring in InAs/InP quantum dash amplifiers: a nearly instantaneous gain response taking place across the entire inhomogeneously broadened gain spectrum. The phenomenon is induced by a 100–150 fs pulse and is observable using multiwavelength pump probe measurements. Large bias levels and an intense pump pulse are imperative for enacting the ultrafast mechanism which is due to a combination of the gain inhomogeneity, nonlinear two photon absorption and the quantum wirelike density of state function.

Measurements of saturated amplified spontaneous emission-spectra of quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers demonstrate efficient replenishment of the quantum-dot ground state population from excited states. This saturation behavior is perfectly modeled by a rate equation model. We examined experimentally the dependence of saturation on the drive current and the saturating optical pump power as well as on the pump wavelength. A coherent noise spectral hole is observed with which we assess dynamical properties and propose optimization of the SOA operating parameters for high speed applications.

Diffusion NMR, and in particular the DOSY processing method (Diffusion Ordered SpectroscopY), is an attractive technique to characterize mixtures without first having to separate the components. As a result, DOSY can yield a vast amount of analytical information. General applications of DOSY are reviewed here although we emphasize specialist applications that provide unique data. Such applications include the analysis of kinetic products, the detection of impurities in complex mixtures and the analysis of foodstuffs. We also focus on recent applications, such as the incorporation of DOSY into drug discovery protocols and as a filter in the analysis of natural product extracts or compound libraries. Depending on the characteristics of the sample under study, a careful choice of DOSY NMR experiment and its processing strategy is required to obtain optimum results. Moreover, this review describes the strengths and weakness of the different DOSY experimental and processing methods from the perspective of its application by the analytical chemist to a larger variety of sample types.