Anisotropy landscape influence on the spin depth profile of Co/Pt multilayer thin films undergoing All-Optical Switching

The interaction between light and magnetism in magnetic metamaterials with ultrafast optical response could lead to novel magnetic memory devices. One of the promising candidates with such characteristics are Co/Pt multilayer thin films with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) that exhibit an emerging phenomenon called All-Optical Switching (AOS). The AOS consists in the inversion of the magnetization induced by ultrafast laser pulses, where circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses deterministically reverse the magnetic domains of magnetic thinfilms driven by the AOS phenomenon. The AOS behaviour is critically dependent on the growth conditions of the multilayers, which hugely influence the magnetic properties of the multilayers, and in particular the magnetic anisotropy. Here we propose to carry out a polarized neutron reflectometry experiment to shed light on the widely discussed mechanism under AOS and optimizing the samples' parameters towards its usefulness in future technological devices.”