The original observation of the Einstein-de Haas effect was a landmark experiment in the early history of modern physics that illustrates the relationship between magnetism and angular momentum 1, 2 . Today the effect is still discussed in elementary physics courses to demonstrate that the angular momentum associated with the aligned electron spins in a ferromagnet can be converted to mechanical angular momentum by reversing the direction of magnetisation using an external magnetic field. In recent times, a related problem in magnetism concerns the time-scale over which this angular momentum transfer can occur. It is known experimentally for several metallic ferromagnets that intense photoexcitation leads to a drop in the magnetisation on a time scale shorter than 100 fs, a phenomenon called ultrafast demagnetisation 3-5 . The microscopic mechanism for this process has been hotly debated, with one key question still unanswered: where does the angular momentum go on these femtosecond time scales? Here we show using femtosecond time-resolved x-ray diffraction that a majority of the angular momentum lost from the spin system on the laser-induced demagnetisation of ferromagnetic iron is transferred to the lattice on sub-picosecond timescales, manifesting as a transverse strain wave that propagates from the surface into the bulk. By fitting a simple model of the x-ray data to simulations and optical data, we estimate that the angular momentum occurs on a time scale of 200 fs and corresponds to 80% of the angular momentum lost from the spin system. Our results show that interaction with the lattice plays an essential role in the process of ultrafast demagnetisation in this system. 2Broadly speaking, proposed mechanisms for ultrafast demagnetisation fall into two categories: spin-flip scattering mechanisms and spin transport mechanisms. The first category explains the demagnetisation process as a sudden increase in scattering processes that ultimately result in a decrease of spin order. These scattering processes can include electron-electron, electron-phonon, electron-magnon and even direct spin-light interactions. On average, such scattering must necessarily involve a transfer of angular momentum from the electronic spins to some other subsystem(s). Candidates include the lattice, the electromagnetic field, and the orbital angular momentum of the electrons. Numerical estimates and experiments using circularly polarised light strongly suggest that the amount of angular momentum given to the electromagnetic field interaction is negligible 6 , and experiments using femtosecond x-ray magnetic dichroism (XMCD) indicate that the angular momentum of both electronic spins and orbitals decrease in magnitude nearly simultaneously 7-9 . The only remaining possibility for a spin-flip induced change in angular momentum therefore appears to be a transfer to the lattice via spin-orbit coupling, but this remains to be experimentally verified.The second category of proposed mechanisms relies on the idea that laser excitation causes a ...
Femtosecond time-resolved X-ray diffraction is used to study a photo-induced phase transition between two charge density wave (CDW) states in 1T-TaS2, namely the nearly commensurate (NC) and the incommensurate (I) CDW states. Structural modulations associated with the NC-CDW order are found to disappear within 400 fs. The photo-induced I-CDW phase then develops through a nucleation/growth process which ends 100 ps after laser excitation. We demonstrate that the newly formed I-CDW phase is fragmented into several nanometric domains that are growing through a coarsening process. The coarsening dynamics is found to follow the universal Lifshitz-Allen-Cahn growth law, which describes the ordering kinetics in systems exhibiting a non-conservative order parameter.Among strongly correlated electron systems, superconductors and materials exhibiting metal-insulator transitions are usually characterized by strong electronelectron and electron-phonon couplings [1][2][3]. At thermodynamic equilibrium, the corresponding many-body interactions lead to rich phase diagrams as a function of temperature, pressure or doping. Such compounds also display fascinating out-of-equilibrium physics, in the form of ultra-fast symmetry changes known as photoinduced phase transitions [4][5][6], and occurrence of new, transient states [6][7][8].Charge density wave (CDW) states are broken symmetry states of metals arising from electron-phonon interactions. They are characterized by a periodic modulation of both atomic positions and electron density. The metal-to-CDW phase transition is characterized by the growth of a complex-valued order parameter p = A exp iΦ , which reflects both the amplitude A and the phase Φ of the periodic modulation [3]. A number of photo-induced phase transitions that have been achieved in CDW compounds correspond to a suppression of the CDW order, i.e. a transition between a CDW state and a metallic state free of any structural modulation [5,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Among those, the photo-induced suppression of the CDW state in blue bronze was shown to involve a coherent motion of atoms along the normal coordinates of the CDW amplitude mode [5]. In this case, the amplitude mode allows continuous variations of the modulus of the order parameter |p|, the metallic state corresponding to |p|=0. In the present work, we focus on the photo-induced phase transition between the nearly commensurate (NC) and the incommensurate (I) CDW states in 1T-TaS 2 , which exhibit two distinct order parameters. When thermallyinduced, this first-order phase transition involves a discontinuous change of atomic positions, and a coexistence of NC and I phase domains over a 3 K range [16,17]. It is thus expected that the photo-induced I phase appears through non-coherent atomic motions, by a nucleation/growth process. We report that the photo-induced NC → I phase is completed within 100 ps after laser excitation. At this 100 ps delay, the photo-induced I-CDW phase is found divided into domains with a typical size of 150Å. Its ordering kinet...
Aims. The high energy spectrum of 3C 273 is usually understood in terms of inverse-Compton emission in a relativistic leptonic jet. This model predicts variability patterns and delays that could be tested with simultaneous observations from the radio to the GeV range. Methods. The instruments IBIS, SPI, JEM-X on board INTEGRAL, PCA on board RXTE, and LAT on board Fermi have enough sensitivity to follow the spectral variability of 3C 273 from the keV to the GeV. We looked for correlations between the different energy bands, including radio data at 37 GHz collected at the Metsähovi Radio Observatory and built quasi-simultaneous multiwavelength spectra in the high energy domain when the source is flaring either in the X-rays or in the γ rays. Results. Both temporal and spectral analysis suggest a two-component model to explain the complete high energy spectrum. X-ray emission is likely dominated by a Seyfert-like component while the γ-ray emission is dominated by a blazar-like component produced by the relativistic jet. The variability of the blazar-like component is discussed, comparing the spectral parameters in the two different spectral states. Changes of the electron Lorentz factor are found to be the most likely source of the observed variability.
The interaction of many-body systems with intense light pulses may lead to novel emergent phenomena far from equilibrium. Recent discoveries, such as the optical enhancement of the critical temperature in certain superconductors and the photo-stabilization of hidden phases, have turned this field into an important research frontier. Here, we demonstrate nonthermal charge-density-wave (CDW) order at electronic temperatures far greater than the thermodynamic transition temperature. Using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and time-resolved X-ray diffraction, we investigate the electronic and structural order parameters of an ultrafast photoinduced CDW-to-metal transition. Tracking the dynamical CDW recovery as a function of electronic temperature reveals a behaviour markedly different from equilibrium, which we attribute to the suppression of lattice fluctuations in the transient nonthermal phonon distribution. A complete description of the system’s coherent and incoherent order-parameter dynamics is given by a time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau framework, providing access to the transient potential energy surfaces.
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