Ultrafast and Terahertz Spintronics

Spin-based electronics (spintronics) aims at extending electronic functionalities by using electron spin to carry information, which has applications from information storage and processing to sensing and photonics. To make spintronic operations competitive and compatible with other information carriers like photons and electrons, their speed needs to be pushed to femtosecond time scales and, thus, terahertz frequencies.

In ultrafast spintronics, femtosecond optical laser pulses and, more recently, terahertz electromagnetic pulses are used to induce spin torque and spin transport and to monitor the subsequent time evolution. The two approaches, sometimes referred to as femto-magnetism and terahertz magnetism, have provided new insights and applications including the ultrafast optical switching of magnetic order and the generation of broadband terahertz electromagnetic fields.

Guest Editors: Tobias Kampfrath, Sangeeta Sharma, Martin Weinelt, Andrei Kirilyuk, and Stéphane Mangin