Engineering Commons^™

Ultrafast Time-Resolved Structural Changes Of Thin-Film Ferromagnetic Metal Heated With Femtosecond Optical Pulses, Runze Li, Hani Elsayed-Ali, Jie Chen, Dinesh Dhankhar, Arjun Krishnamoorthi, Peter M. Rentzepis

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

As a classic ferromagnetic material, nickel has been an important research candidate used to study dynamics and interactions of electron, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom. In this study, we specifically chose a thick, 150 nm ferromagnetic nickel (111) single crystal rather than 10–20 nm thin crystals that are typically used in ultrafast studies, and we revealed both the ultrafast heating within the skin depth and the heat transfer from the surface (skin) layer to the bulk of the crystal. The lattice deformation after femtosecond laser excitation was investigated by means of 8.04 keV subpicosecond x-ray pulses, generated from a …