Probing photoinduced rearrangements in the NdNiO3 magnetic spiral with polarization-sensitive ultrafast resonant soft x-ray scattering

We use resonant soft x-ray diffraction to track the photoinduced dynamics of the antiferromagnetic structure in a NdNiO3 thin film. Femtosecond laser pulses with a photon energy of 0.61 eV, resonant with electron transfer between long-bond and short-bond nickel sites, are used to excite the material and drive an ultrafast insulatormetal transition. Polarization-sensitive soft x-ray diffraction, resonant to the nickel L3 edge, then probes the evolution of the underlying magnetic spiral as a function of time delay with 80 ps time resolution. By modeling the azimuthal dependence of the scattered intensity for different linear x-ray polarizations, we benchmark the changes of the local magnetic moments and the spin alignment. The measured changes are consistent with a reduction of the long-bond site magnetic moments and an alignment of the spins towards a more collinear structure at early time delays.