Single-shot helicity-independent all-optical switching of magnetization in ferrimagnets represents the fastest known approach for deterministic data recording. Recently, it was shown that 15-ps-long optical pulses could suffice in triggering the magnetic switching in certain Gd-Fe-Co alloys, generating enormous controversy about the underlying mechanism. Here, we demonstrate how the exact composition of the ferrimagnet affects the kinetics of the reversal process and facilitates the use of thermal pulses with a duration spanning all relevant timescales within the nonadiabatic limit. By modelling a generic ferrimagnet as two coupled macrospins, we show that the magnetization reversal can occur via distinctly different pathways, depending on the duration of the heater. We experimentally reveal that pulses with a duration below and above a critical pulse width respectively enable and disable the capability of all-optical magnetization switching in Gd-Fe-Co alloys, and that modest change of the alloy composition leads to drastic variation of the critical pulse width, by almost 2 orders of magnitude. Our interpretation and results resolve an urgent and outstanding technologically relevant controversy, and provide crucial but previously overlooked guidelines for how to engineer deterministic all-optical switching of magnetization in suitable ferrimagnets.

Magnonics explores precessional excitations of ordered spins in magnetic materials-so-called spin wavesand their use as information and signal carriers within networks of magnonic waveguides. Here, we demonstrate that the nonuniformity of the internal magnetic field and magnetization inherent to magnetic structures creates a medium of graded refractive index for propagating magnetostatic waves and can be used to steer their propagation. The character of the nonuniformity can be tuned and potentially programmed using the applied magnetic field, which opens exciting prospects for the field of graded-index magnonics. Over the past decade, magnonics (the study of spin waves-precessional excitations of ordered spins in magnetic materials [1]) has emerged as one of the most rapidly growing research fields in magnetism [2,3]. Moreover, recent advances in the understanding of fundamental properties of spin waves in magnetic micro-and nanostructures have highlighted magnonics as a potential rival of or complement to semiconductor technology in the field of data communication and processing [4]. The push for miniaturization renders ferromagnetic transition metals and their alloys to be materials of choice for the fabrication of spin-wave devices [5,6]. However, loss reduction, the shortening of the wavelength of studied spin waves, and the associated miniaturization of the implemented magnonic concepts and devices remain major challenges in both experimental research and technological development in magnonics [2,3].In this Rapid Communication, we explore an approach to meet these challenges that is based on the concept of gradedindex (or gradient-index) optics [7]. As applied to spin waves, this concept is based on the following basic ideas. First, the propagation of spin waves is controlled using subwavelength, often continuously varying, magnetic nonuniformities [8,9]. This should minimize scaling of the device size with the magnonic wavelength, in contrast to, e.g., magnonic crystal based approaches [3], and thereby ease the associated patterning resolution requirements. Indeed, nonuniform effective magnetic field and magnetization configurations have been shown to confine [10,11] and channel [12][13][14][15] spin waves, to continuously modify their character [16][17][18], and to enable their coupling to essentially uniform free space microwaves [19,20]. Here, we go further by exploiting in addition the anisotropic dispersion inherent to spin waves dominated by the dynamic magneto-dipole field-so-called magnetostatic spin waves [1]. The symmetry axis of the anisotropic magnetostatic dispersion coincides with the direction of the magnetization [21][22][23]. This anisotropic dispersion leads to the formation of nondiffracting caustic spin-wave beams * Corresponding author: v.v.kruglyak@exeter.ac.uk [24][25][26][27][28][29][30] and to anomalous spin-wave reflection, refraction, and diffraction [31][32][33][34][35]. Here, we explore these ideas in networks of magnonic waveguides [6,8,[12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]24,...

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Ever since the first observation of all-optical switching of magnetization in the ferrimagnetic alloy GdFeCo using femtosecond laser pulses, there has been significant interest in exploiting this process for data-recording applications. in particular, the ultrafast speed of the magnetic reversal can enable the writing speeds associated with magnetic memory devices to be potentially pushed towards tHz frequencies. this work reports the development of perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions incorporating a stack of tb/co nanolayers whose magnetization can be all-optically controlled via helicity-independent single-shot switching. toggling of the magnetization of the tb/co electrode was achieved using either 60 femtosecond-long or 5 picosecond-long laser pulses, with incident fluences down to 3.5 mJ/cm 2 , for co-rich compositions of the stack either in isolation or coupled to a cofeBelectrode/Mgo-barrier tunnel-junction stack. Successful switching of the cofeB-[tb/co] electrodes was obtained even after annealing at 250 °c. After integration of the [tb/co]-based electrodes within perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions yielded a maximum tunneling magnetoresistance signal of 41% and RxA value of 150 Ωμm 2 with current-in-plane measurements and ratios between 28% and 38% in nanopatterned pillars. these results represent a breakthrough for the development of perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions controllable using single laser pulses, and offer a technologically-viable path towards the realization of hybrid spintronic-photonic systems featuring tHz switching speeds. Ferrimagnetic systems based on rare earth (RE)-transition metal (TM) alloys and multilayers have been extensively studied in recent decades, largely due to their potential application in the field of magneto-optical recording 1. The strong perpendicular magnetocrystalline anisotropy inherent to amorphous RE-TM systems have allowed these alloys to play a key role in the historical transition from longitudinal to perpendicular magnetic recording structures 2 , and made them ideal for handling magnetic bit instabilities arising from superparamagnetic effects 3. Binary and ternary RE-TM systems such as GdFeCo, GdCo, TbCo or GdFe are still driving forward new developments pertaining to spintronic devices, including spin valves for magnetic read heads 4 , perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (p-MTJs) 5,6 or spin-orbit-torque phenomena 7. Recent works in this field have also revealed that RE-TM-based films (amorphous or multilayered) represent ideal materials for the observation and study of the phenomena of all-optical switching (AOS) 8-10. In these systems, it is possible to switch the magnetization using suitable laser pulses without the application of any external magnetic field. Depending on whether the laser-pulses need to be circularly-polarized, AOS of magnetization can be classed as either helicity-dependent (HD-AOS) or helicity-independent (HI-AOS). Furthermore, subject to the material in question, the switching process can be achieved with either a...

The wave solutions of the Landau-Lifshitz equation (spin waves) are characterized by some of the most complex and peculiar dispersion relations among all waves. For example, the spin-wave ("magnonic") dispersion can range from the parabolic law (typical for a quantum-mechanical electron) at short wavelengths to the nonanalytical linear type (typical for light and acoustic phonons) at long wavelengths. Moreover, the longwavelength magnonic dispersion has a gap and is inherently anisotropic, being naturally negative for a range of relative orientations between the effective field and the spin-wave vector. Nonuniformities in the effective field and magnetization configurations enable the guiding and steering of spin waves in a deliberate manner and therefore represent landscapes of graded refractive index (graded magnonic index). By analogy to the fields of graded-index photonics and transformation optics, the studies of spin waves in graded magnonic landscapes can be united under the umbrella of the graded-index magnonics theme and are reviewed here with focus on the challenges and opportunities ahead of this exciting research direction.

Using Brillouin light scattering microscopy and micromagnetic simulations, we study the propagation and transformation of magnetostatic spin waves across uniformly biased curved magnonic waveguides. Our results demonstrate that the spin wave transmission through the bend can be enhanced or weakened by modifying the distribution of the inhomogeneous internal magnetic field spanning the structure. Our results open up the possibility of optimally molding the flow of spin waves across networks of magnonic waveguides, thereby representing a step forward in the design and construction of the more complex magnonic circuitry.

We demonstrate a magnonic beam splitter that works by inter-converting magnetostatic surface and backward-volume spin waves propagating in orthogonal sections of a T-shaped yttrium iron garnet structure. The inter-conversion is enabled by the overlap of the surface and volume spin wave bands. This overlap results from the demagnetising field induced along the transversely magnetised section(-s) of the structure and the quantization of the transverse wave number of the propagating spin waves (which are therefore better described as waveguide modes). In agreement with numerical micromagnetic simulations, our Brillouin light scattering imaging experiments reveal that, depending on the frequency, the incident fundamental waveguide magnonic modes may also be converted into higher order waveguide modes. The magnonic beam splitter demonstrated here is an important step towards the development of parallel logic circuitry of magnonics.

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