Browsing by Author "Kalitsov, Alan"

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    Signatures of nonthermal melting
    (American Institute of Physics, 2015) Zier, Tobias; Zijlstra, Eeuwe S.; Kalitsov, Alan; Theodonis, Ioannis; Garcia, Martin E.; Universitat Kassel; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; National Technical University of Athens
    Intense ultrashort laser pulses can melt crystals in less than a picosecond but, in spite of over thirty years of active research, for many materials it is not known to what extent thermal and nonthermal microscopic processes cause this ultrafast phenomenon. Here, we perform ab-initio molecular-dynamics simulations of silicon on a laser-excited potential-energy surface, exclusively revealing nonthermal signatures of laser-induced melting. From our simulated atomic trajectories, we compute the decay of five structure factors and the time-dependent structure function. We demonstrate how these quantities provide criteria to distinguish predominantly nonthermal from thermal melting. (C) 2015 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
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    Spin-orbit torque-assisted switching in magnetic insulator thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy
    (Nature Portfolio, 2016) Li, Peng; Liu, Tao; Chang, Houchen; Kalitsov, Alan; Zhang, Wei; Csaba, Gyorgy; Li, Wei; Richardson, Daniel; DeMann, August; Rimal, Gaurab; Dey, Himadri; Jiang, J. S.; Porod, Wolfgang; Field, Stuart B.; Tang, Jinke; Marconi, Mario C.; Hoffmann, Axel; Mryasov, Oleg; Wu, Mingzhong; Colorado State University; University of Alabama Tuscaloosa; United States Department of Energy (DOE); Argonne National Laboratory; University of Notre Dame; University of Wyoming
    As an in-plane charge current flows in a heavy metal film with spin-orbit coupling, it produces a torque on and thereby switches the magnetization in a neighbouring ferromagnetic metal film. Such spin-orbit torque (SOT)-induced switching has been studied extensively in recent years and has shown higher efficiency than switching using conventional spin-transfer torque. Here we report the SOT-assisted switching in heavy metal/magnetic insulator systems. The experiments used a Pt/BaFe12O19 bilayer where the BaFe12O19 layer exhibits perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. As a charge current is passed through the Pt film, it produces a SOT that can control the up and down states of the remnant magnetization in the BaFe12O19 film when the film is magnetized by an in-plane magnetic field. It can reduce or increase the switching field of the BaFe12O19 film by as much as about 500 Oe when the film is switched with an out-of-plane field.