Fyzikální ústav Akademie věd ČR

Spintronics is the leading technology for magnetic storage and sensing. In the near futurte, it is expected to provide high density magnetic random access memories and logic-in-memory architectures, opening a route to the new generation of high-speed, low-power instant on-and-off computers.

A direct transfer of angular momentum from a circularly polarized light to spins allows to excite a magnet from its equilibrium state at sub-picosecond time scales. The discovery, allowing to manipulate spins in a magnet by short laser pulses, was reported by scientists from the joint Laboratory of Opto-Spintronics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University and the Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.