Understanding how spins orient and can be manipulated at very fast, pico and femtosecond scales has implications for ultra-fast, low-power data processing and storage applications.
An international research team, to which Jean-Eric Wegrowe of the Irradiated Solids Laboratory contributes, is experimentally demonstrating the intrinsic dynamics of inertial spin in ferromagnetic thin films, in the form of nutation of magnetization at a frequency of ~0.5 THz.