Dependence of all-optical magnetic switching on the sublattice magnetization orientation in Tb-Fe thin films

We demonstrate that the direction of all-optical switching (AOS) in rare-earth transition-metal (RE-TM) alloy Tb-Fe thin films depends on the orientation of the sublattice magnetization and not on the direction of the resulting net magnetization. For this purpose, we investigated the AOS ability for a sample dominated by the Fe sublattice magnetization (Tb24Fe76) and another dominated by the Tb sublattice (Tb30Fe70). This finding of the sublattice dependence of AOS contributes to the understanding of switching in RE-TM multilayered thin films and heterostructures.