All-Optical Probe of Magnetization Dynamics in exchange coupled NiFe/FeMn Bilayers on the Picosecond Timescale

A 8.5 ps short laser excitation (pulse energy: 10 nJ, spot size: 30 µm) is used to thermally control the magnetization of a polycrystalline, mesoscopic NiFe/FeMn exchange biased bilayer system on a picosecond time scale. Due to the creation of a hot spin and phonon gas the exchange coupling across the interface between the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic layers is reduced upon arrival of the excitation pulse.

Within 10 picoseconds a fast optical unpinning of the exchange bias coupling is observed for the easy axis geometry as well as for the hard axis case by longitudinal Kerr effect of a time-delayed weak probe pulse. This leads to a reduction of the exchange bias field Heb of about 50 percent (shown in Fig. 1) and to a dramatic increase of the zero-field susceptibility, respectively [1]. A similar time dependence is found for the coercive field Hc of the 50µm x 50µm sample structure under investigation. These effects indicate that the lattice temperature at the FM/AFM interface is elevated close to the blocking temperature Tb (155°C for FeMn) of the exchange coupled system. The fast optical unpinning is followed by a slower recovery of the exchange bias field and the zero-field susceptibility governed by a phenomenological spin-lattice time constant of 160 ps. Pump-probe measurements on a sample with different thicknesses of FeMn, thus different exchange bias field values, show that this relaxation time is independent of the bias field strength.