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Coherent light-matter interactions mediated by opto-magnetic phenomena like the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) are expected to provide a non-thermal pathway for ultrafast manipulation of magnetism on timescales as short as the excitation pulse itself. As the IFE scales with the spin-orbit coupling strength of the involved electronic states, photo-exciting the strongly spin-orbit coupled core-level electrons in magnetic materials appears as an appealing method to transiently generate large opto-magnetic moments. Here, we investigate this scenario in a ferrimagnetic GdFeCo alloy by using intense and circularly polarized pulses of extreme ultraviolet radiation. Our results reveal ultrafast and strong helicity-dependent magnetic effects which are in line with the characteristic fingerprints of an IFE, corroborated by ab initio opto-magnetic IFE theory and atomistic spin dynamics simulations.

We use a pump-probe scheme to measure the time evolution of the C K-edge X-ray absorption spectrum (XAS) from CO/Ru(0001) after excitation by an ultrashort high-intensity optical laser pulse. Due to the short duration of the X-ray probe pulse and precise control of the pulse delay, the excitation-induced dynamics during the first ps after the pump can be resolved with unprecedented time resolution. By comparing with theoretical (DFT) spectrum calculations we find high excitation of the internal stretch and frustrated rotation modes occurring within 200 fs of laser excitation, as well as thermalization of the system in the ps regime. The ~100 fs initial excitation of these CO vibrational modes is not readily rationalized by traditional theories of nonadiabatic coupling of adsorbates to metal surfaces, e. g. electronic frictions based on first order electron-phonon coupling or transient population of adsorbate resonances. We suggest that coupling of the adsorbate to non-thermalized electron-hole pairs is responsible for the ultrafast initial excitation of the modes., Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures. To be published in Physical Review Letters: https://journals.aps.org/prl/accepted/c1070Y74M8b18063d9cd0221b000631d50ef7a249

FERMI, the seeded Free Electron Laser (FEL) located at the Elettra laboratory in Trieste, Italy, consists of two FEL lines. The FEL-1 facility, covering the wavelength range between 20 and 100 nm, was officially opened to external users. The shorter wavelength range, between 20 and 4 nm, is covered by the FEL-2 line, a double stage cascade operating in the “fresh bunch injection” mode, which is still under commissioning. We will report on the different FEL-1 operation modes that can be offered for users and assess the performance of the facility. The progress in the commissioning of FEL-2 will then be addressed, in particular reporting the performance attained at the lower wavelength limit; this aspect is of great interest for the user’s community of the FERMI seeded FEL since it allows to carry out experiments below the carbon K-edge., Proceedings of the 5th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2014, Dresden, Germany

FERMI has reached its nominal performance on both FEL lines, FEL-1 (12 eV to 62 eV) and FEL-2 (62 eV to 310 eV). After a brief overview of the activities with users, we will describe plans for LINAC , FEL and beamline upgrades for 2016-2018 and beyond. This includes EEHG schemes for FEL-2., Proceedings of the 7th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf., IPAC2016, Busan, Korea

It was shown recently that the Fe magnetization reversal in the Fe/MnAs/GaAs(001) epitaxial system, attained by temperature control of the regular stripe pattern of the MnAs alpha- and beta-phases, can also be driven by an ultrashort optical laser pulse. In the present time-resolved scattering experiment, we address the dynamics of the MnAs alpha-beta self-organized stripe pattern induced by a 100 fs optical laser pulse, using as a probe the XUV radiation from the FERMI free-electron laser. We observe a loss in the diffraction intensity from the ordered alpha-beta stripes that occurs at two characteristic timescales in the range of similar to 10(-12) and similar to 10(-10) s. We associate the first intensity drop with ultrafast electron-lattice energy exchange processes within the laser-MnAs interaction volume and the second with thermal diffusion towards the MnAs/GaAs interface. With the support of model calculations, the observed dynamics are interpreted in terms of the formation of a laterally homogeneous MnAs overlayer, the thickness of which evolves in time, correlating the MnAs microstructure dynamics with the Fe magnetization response.

The recent advent of free-electron laser (FEL) sources is driving the scientific community to extend table-top laser research to shorter wavelengths adding elemental selectivity and chemical state specificity. Both a compact setup (mini-TIMER) and a separate instrument (EIS-TIMER) dedicated to four-wave-mixing (FWM) experiments has been designed and constructed, to be operated as a branch of the Elastic and Inelastic Scattering beamline: EIS. The FWM experiments that are planned at EIS-TIMER are based on the transient grating approach, where two crossed FEL pulses create a controlled modulation of the sample excitations while a third time-delayed pulse is used to monitor the dynamics of the excited state. This manuscript describes such experimental facilities, showing the preliminary results of the commissioning of the EIS-TIMER beamline, and discusses original experimental strategies being developed to study the dynamics of matter at the fs-nm time-length scales. In the near future such experimental tools will allow more sophisticated FEL-based FWM applications, that also include the use of multiple and multi-color FEL pulses. © 2016 International Union of Crystallography.