We report on the determination of micromagnetic parameters of epilayers of the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As, which has an easy axis in the sample plane, and (Ga,Mn)(As,P), which has an easy axis perpendicular to the sample plane. We use an optical analog of ferromagnetic resonance where the laser-pulse-induced precession of magnetization is measured directly in the time domain. By the analysis of a single set of pump-and-probe magneto-optical data, we determined the magnetic anisotropy fields, the spin stiffness, and the Gilbert damping constant in these two materials. We show that incorporation of 10% of phosphorus in (Ga,Mn)As with 6% of manganese leads not only to the expected sign change of the perpendicular-to-plane anisotropy field but also to an increase of the Gilbert damping and to a reduction of the spin stiffness. The observed changes in the micromagnetic parameters upon incorporating P in (Ga,Mn)As are consistent with the reduced hole density, conductivity, and Curie temperature of the (Ga,Mn)(As,P) material. We also show that the apparent magnetization precession damping is stronger for the n = 1 spin wave resonance mode than for the n = 0 uniform magnetization precession mode.

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To realize the very objective of spintronics, namely the development of ultra-high frequency and energy-efficient electronic devices, an ultrafast and scalable approach to switch magnetic bits is required. Magnetization switching with spin currents generated by the spin–orbit interaction at ferromagnetic/non-magnetic interfaces is one of such scalable approaches, where the ultimate switching speed is limited by the Larmor precession frequency. Understanding the magnetization precession dynamics induced by spin–orbit torques (SOTs) is therefore of great importance. Here we demonstrate generation of ultrashort SOT pulses that excite Larmor precession at an epitaxial Fe/GaAs interface by converting femtosecond laser pulses into high-amplitude current pulses in an electrically biased p-i-n photodiode. We control the polarity, amplitude, and duration of the current pulses and, most importantly, also their propagation direction with respect to the crystal orientation. The SOT origin of the excited Larmor precession was revealed by a detailed analysis of the precession phase and amplitude at different experimental conditions.

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We report on a quasi-nondegenerate pump–probe technique that is based on spectral-filtration of femtosecond laser pulses by a pair of mutually-spectrally-disjunctive commercially available interference filters. The described technique enables to obtain pump and probe pulses with wavelengths that are spectrally close but distinct. These contradictory requirements, which are dictated, for example, by a suppression of stray pump photons from the probe beam in spin-sensitive magneto-optical experiments in non-magnetic semiconductors, can be fulfilled at very low cost and basically no requirement on space. Especially the second feature is important in pump–probe microscopy where collinear propagation of pump and probe pulses is dictated by utilization of a microscopic objective and where the setups are typically quite complex but suffer from a limited size of optical breadboards. Importantly, this spectral-filtration of 100 fs long laser pulses does not affect considerably the resulting time-resolution, which remains well below 500 fs. We demonstrate the practical applicability of this technique by performing spin-sensitive magnetooptical Kerr effect (MOKE) experiment in GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, where a high-mobility spin system is formed after optical injection of electrons at wavelengths close to the MOKE resonance. In particular, we studied the time- and spatial-evolutions of spin-related (MOKE) and charge-related (reflectivity) signals. We revealed that they evolve in a similar but not exactly the same way which we attributed to interplay of several electron many-body effects in GaAs.