Multiferroics have attracted strong interest for potential applications where electric fields control magnetic order. The ultimate speed of control via magnetoelectric coupling, however, remains largely unexplored. Here, we report an experiment in which we drove spin dynamics in multiferroic TbMnO3 with an intense few-cycle terahertz (THz) light pulse tuned to resonance with an electromagnon, an electric-dipole active spin excitation. We observed the resulting spin motion using time-resolved resonant soft x-ray diffraction. Our results show that it is possible to directly manipulate atomic-scale magnetic structures with the electric field of light on a sub-picosecond time scale.
Type
research article
Web of Science ID
WOS:000333108500031
Authors
Kubacka, T.
•
Johnson, J. A.
•
Hoffmann, M. C.
•
Vicario, C.
•
De Jong, S.
•
Beaud, P.
•
Grubel, S.
•
Huang, S.- W.
•
Huber, L.
•
Patthey, L.
Publication date
2014
Published in
Volume
343
Issue
6177
Start page
1333
End page
1336
Peer reviewed
REVIEWED
Available on Infoscience
March 12, 2015
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