Hypersonic heat-induced flows of magnons induced by femtosecond laser pulses

In this work, we present evidence for the existence of a magnonic current on the sub-picosecond time-scale in a ferrimagnetic bilayer and its effect on ultrafast spin dynamics. The ferrimagnet, GdFeCo, is a material known to undergo ultrafast switching within 1-2ps after excitation with femtosecond laser pulses. Here, we show that the strong thermal gradients induced by applying femtosecond laser pulses and the presence of chemical inhomogeneities lead to local imbalances in the effective temperatures of the spins that produces a rapid transfer of spin angular momentum, which we interpret as an ultrafast spin Seebeck effect. We have quantified the typical magnon propagation in such a system. The results show ballistic magnon propagation with 30nm/ps velocities. The characteristic time scale of such magnon propagation indicates that this magnon transport can play an important role in switching, a crucial piece of understanding towards realising next generation data processing devices that operate at much higher frequencies.