Harnessing Plasmonic Heating For Switching In Antiferromagnets
H. Y. Yuan, Yizheng Wu, Olena Gomonay
TLDR
This paper demonstrates ultralow-energy, reversible switching of antiferromagnetic domains using controllable plasmonic heating and thermal-induced strain.
Key contributions
- Demonstrates reversible switching of antiferromagnetic domains using plasmonic heating, without magnetic fields or currents.
- Achieves ultralow switching energy of ~1 nJ, significantly lower than current-driven methods.
- Identifies thermal-induced strain fields and magnetoelastic coupling as the core switching mechanism.
- Enables controlled strain direction by exciting specific plasmon modes via wave polarization.
Why it matters
This work offers a novel, energy-efficient method for manipulating magnetism, opening new avenues for green information technologies. It bridges photonics, acoustics, and spintronics, fostering interdisciplinary research in low-power data storage.
Original Abstract
Heat waste is a bottleneck in the development of green information technologies and much effort has been devoted to suppress the heating effect in both electronic and spintronic devices. Here we take an alternative approach and show that controllable heating at the nanoscale can actually benefit information processing. In particular, we study a hybrid nanostructure consisting of a metallic square frame and an antiferromagnetic (AFM) thin film and show that the plasmonic heating can reversibly switch two perpendicularly-oriented AFM domains without the assistance of magnetic fields and electric currents. The required switching energy is at the order 1 nJ, three to six orders of magnitude lower than the current-driven AFM switching. The physical mechanism arises from the thermal-induced strain fields inside the frame, which couple to and manipulate the magnetic orientation via magnetoelastic effect. The strain field direction can be well controlled by selectively exciting the longitudinal and transverse plasmon modes by varying the polarization of the waves, which readily allows for a reversible switching of the AFM vector. Our findings provide tremendous opportunities for optically manipulating the magnetism with ultralow energy consumption and may further promote the interdisciplinary study of photonics, acoustics and spintronics.
📬 Weekly AI Paper Digest
Get the top 10 AI/ML arXiv papers from the week — summarized, scored, and delivered to your inbox every Monday.