Search

Solving complex tasks in a modern information-driven society requires novel materials and concepts for energy-efficient hardware. Antiferromagnets offer a promising platform for seeking such approaches due to their exceptional features: low power consumption and possible high integration density are desirable for information storage and processing or applications in unconventional computing. Among antiferromagnets, CuMnAs stands out for atomic-level scalable magnetic textures, analogue multilevel storage capability, and the magnetic state's control by a single electrical or femtosecond laser pulse. Using a pair of excitation laser pulses, this work examines synaptic and neuronal functionalities of CuMnAs for information processing, readily incorporating two principles of distinct characteristic timescales. Laser-induced transient heat dynamics at sub-nanosecond times represents the short-term memory and causes resistance switching due to quenching into a magnetically fragmented state. This quench switching, detectable electrically from ultrashort times to hours after writing, reminisces the long-term memory. The versatility of the principles' combination is demonstrated by operations commonly used in neural networks. Temporal latency coding, fundamental to spiking neural networks, is utilized to encode data from a grayscale image into sub-nanosecond pulse delays. Applying input laser pulses with distinct amplitudes then allows for pulse-pattern recognition. The results open pathways for designing novel computing architectures., Comment: 20 pages, 10 figures

Angle-twisting engineering has emerged as a powerful tool for modulating electronic properties in van der Waals heterostructures. Recent theoretical works have predicted the modulation of spin texture in graphene-based heterostructures by twist angle, although an experimental verification is missing. Here, we demonstrate the tunability of the spin texture and associated spin-charge interconversion with twist angle in WSe$_2$/graphene heterostructures by using spin precession experiments. For specific twist angles, we experimentally detect a spin component radial with the electron's momentum, in addition to the standard orthogonal component. Our results show that the helicity of the spin texture can be reversed by angle twisting, highlighting its critical role on the spin-orbit properties of WSe$_2$/graphene heterostructures and paving the way for the development of novel spin-twistronic devices., Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures and Supplementary Information

The donor-acceptor interaction of a charge-coupled heterostructure encompassing a metal and an amorphous semiconductor subjected to a laser field has many potential applications in the realm of nonlinear optics. In this work, we fabricate an electron donor gold nanoparticle (AuNP) and acceptor amorphous Ge24Se76 heterostructure on a quartz substrate using a sequential thermal evaporation technique. In this charge-coupled heterostructure, we demonstrate the ultrafast third-order nonlinear absorptive and refractive response and their sign reversal compared to pristine Ge24Se76. Enhanced optical nonlinearity in these heterostructures of varying plasmonic wavelengths is due to charge transfer, verified by the Raman spectroscopy. Further, the ultrafast transient absorption measurements support the thesis of charge transfer in the AuNP/Ge24Se76 heterostructure. These findings open up exciting opportunities for developing novel device technologies with far-reaching applications in nonlinear optics.

Antiferromagnetic CuMnAs thin films have attracted attention since the discovery of the manipulation of their magnetic structure via electrical, optical, and terahertz pulses of electric fields, enabling convenient approaches to the switching between magnetoresistive states of the film for the information storage. However, the magnetic structure and, thus, the efficiency of the manipulation can be affected by the film morphology and growth defects. In this study, we investigate the properties of CuMnAs thin films by probing the defect-related uniaxial anisotropy of electric conductivity by contact-free terahertz transmission spectroscopy. We show that the terahertz measurements conveniently detect the conductivity anisotropy, that are consistent with conventional DC Hall-bar measurements. Moreover, the terahertz technique allows for considerably finer determination of anisotropy axes and it is less sensitive to the local film degradation. Thanks to the averaging over a large detection area, the THz probing also allows for an analysis of strongly non-uniform thin films. Using scanning near-field terahertz and electron microscopies, we relate the observed anisotropic conductivity of CuMnAs to the elongation and orientation of growth defects, which influence the local microscopic conductivity. We also demonstrate control over the morphology of defects by using vicinal substrates., Comment: 33 pages, 16 figures

The observation of a sizable anomalous Hall effect in magnetic materials with vanishing magnetization has renewed interest in understanding and engineering this phenomenon. Antiferromagnetic antiperovskites are one of emerging material classes that exhibit a variety of interesting properties owing to a complex electronic band structure and magnetic ordering. Reports on the anomalous Nernst effect and its magnitude in this class of materials are, however, very limited. This scarcity may be partly due to the experimental difficulty of reliably quantifying the anomalous Nernst coefficient. Here, we report experiments on the anomalous Nernst effect in antiferromagnetic antiperovskite Mn$_3$NiN thin films. Measurement of both the anomalous Hall and Nernst effects using the same sample and measurement geometry makes it possible to directly compare these two effects and quantify the anomalous Nernst coefficient and conductivity in Mn$_3$NiN. We carefully evaluate the spatial distribution of the thermal gradient in the sample and use finite element modeling to corroborate our experimental results.

Antiferromagnets offer spintronic device characteristics unparalleled in ferromagnets owing to their lack of stray fields, THz spin dynamics, and rich materials landscape. Microscopic imaging of aniferromagnetic domains is one of the key prerequisites for understading physical principles of the device operation. However, adapting common magnetometry techniques to the dipolar-field-free antiferromagnets has been a major challenge. Here we demonstrate in a collinear antiferromagnet a thermoelectric detection method by combining the magneto-Seebeck effect with local heat gradients generated by scanning far-field or near-field techniques. In a 20 nm epilayer of uniaxial CuMnAs we observe reversible 180 deg switching of the N\'eel vector via domain wall displacement, controlled by the polarity of the current pulses. We also image polarity-dependent 90 deg switching of the N\'eel vector in a thicker biaxial film, and domain shattering induced at higher pulse amplitudes. The antiferromagnetic domain maps obtained by our laboratory technique are compared to measurements by the established synchrotron microscopy using X-ray magnetic linear dichroism.

Ultra-fast dynamics, insensitivity to external magnetic fields, or absence of magnetic stray fields are examples of properties that make antiferromagnets of potential use in the development of spintronic devices. Similar to their ferromagnetic counterparts, antiferromagnets can store information in the orientations of the collective magnetic order vector. However, also in analogy to ferromagnets, the readout magnetoresistivity signals in simple antiferromagnetic films have been weak and the extension of the electrical reorientation mechanism to optics has not been achieved. Here we report reversible and reproducible quenching of an antiferromagnetic CuMnAs film by either electrical or ultrashort optical pulses into nano-fragmented domain states. The resulting resistivity changes approach 20\% at room temperature, which is comparable to the giant magnetoresistance ratios in ferromagnetic multilayers. We also obtain a signal readout by optical reflectivity. The analog time-dependent switching and relaxation characteristics of our devices can mimic functionality of spiking neural network components.

Harnessing the unique properties of non-collinear antiferromagnets (AFMs) will be essential for exploiting the full potential of antiferromagnetic spintronics. Indeed, many of the effects enabling ferromagnetic spintronic devices have a corresponding counterpart in materials with non-collinear spin structure. In addition, new phenomena such as the magnetic spin Hall effect were experimentally observed in non-collinear AFMs, and the presence of the equivalent to the ferromagnetic spin transfer torque via spin polarized currents was theoretically predicted. In spite of these developments, an interpretation of the rich physical phenomena observed in non-collinear antiferromagnets is challenging, since the microscopic spin arrangement, the magnetic domain distribution, and the domain orientations have proven notoriously difficult to access experimentally. This is all the more problematic, as imaging and writing magnetic domains is of central importance for applications. Successful imaging is a basic requirement to experimentally confirm the spin transfer torque acting on non-collinear domain walls and therefore of eminent interest. Here, we demonstrate that the local magnetic structure of the non-collinear AFM Mn3Sn films can be imaged by scanning thermal gradient microscopy (STGM). The technique is based on scanning a laser spot over the sample's surface, and recording the ensuing thermo-voltage. We image the magnetic structure at a series of different temperatures and show that at room temperature, the domain structure is not affected by the application of moderate magnetic fields. In addition to imaging, we establish a scheme for heat-assisted magnetic recording, using local laser heating in combination with magnetic fields to intentionally write domain patterns into the antiferromagnet., Comment: 4 figures

Controlling low power light beam self-confinement with ultrafast response time opens up opportunities for the development of signal processing in microdevices. The combination of highly nonlinear medium with the tight confinement of plasmonic waves offers a viable but challenging configuration to reach this goal. Here, we report the experimental observation of plasmon-soliton waves propagating in a chalcogenide-based four-layer planar geometry engineered to limit plasmon propagation losses while exhibiting efficient Kerr self-focusing at moderate power. The observations reveal a strongly enhanced self-focusing undergone by a self-trapped beam propagating inside the structure. As expected, only TM polarized waves exhibit such a behavior. Different experimental arrangements are tested that unambiguously reveal the nonlinear plasmon-soliton coupling which is corroborated by numerical simulations., Comment: 33 pages, 14 figures, enhanced and corrected version compared to v1

In magnetic nanowires with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) magnetic domain walls (DW) are narrow and can move rapidly driven by current induced torques. This enables important applications like high-density memories for which the precise detection of the position and motion of a propagating DW is of utmost interest. Today's DW detection tools are often limited in resolution, or acquisition speed, or can only be applied on specific materials. Here, we show that the anomalous Nernst effect provides a simple and powerful tool to precisely track the position and motion of a single DW propagating in a PMA nanowire. We detect field and current driven DW propagation in both metallic heterostructures and dilute magnetic semiconductors over a broad temperature range. The demonstrated spatial resolution below 20 nm is comparable to the DW width in typical metallic PMA systems., Comment: 26 pages including supplementary information

We report on magnetization precession induced in (Ga,Mn)As by an optical spin transfer torque (OSTT). This phenomenon, which corresponds to a transfer of angular momentum from optically-injected spin-polarized electrons to magnetization, was predicted theoretically in 2004 and observed experimentally by our group in 2012. In this paper we provide experimental details about the observation of OSTT by a time-resolved pump-and-probe magneto-optical technique. In particular, we show that the precession of magnetization due to OSTT can be experimentally separated from that induced by the well known magnetic-anisotropy-related mechanism in a hybrid structure piezo-stressor/(Ga,Mn)As with an in situ electrical control of the magnetic anisotropy. We also illustrate that OSTT is clearly apparent in the measured dynamical magneto-optical signal in a large variety of (Ga,Mn)As samples with a Mn concentration from 3% to 9%., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures

The problem of the existence of non-medial distributive hamiltonian quasigroups is solved. Translating this problem first to commutative Moufang loops with operators, then to ternary algebras and, finally, to cocyclic modules over\linebreak $\Bbb Z[x,x^{-1},(1-x)^{-1}]$, it is shown that every non-medial distributive hamiltonian quasigroup has at least 729 elements and that there are just two isomorphism classes of such quasigroups of the least cardinality. The quasigroups representing these two classes are anti-isomorphic., Comment: 30 pages