All-optical magnetic recording for next-generation magnetic storage
The emerging Big Data era demands the ever increasing speed and capacity to store and process information. Recent research has shown that it is possible to realize deterministic and controllable switching of magnetic orders by ultra-fast light pulses. Unlike conventional magnetic storage devices, such an extremely fast and novel reversal mechanism does not require an external magnetic field, which provides us with an opportunity to write data with light. In this talk, I will first introduce the mechanism of all-optical magnetic recording, and our characterization system based on the magneto-optical Kerr effect. Then I will talk about the preliminary experimental results of all-optical switching phenomenon observed in Co/Pt magnetic multilayers. We have explored the influence of different laser repetition rates and peak powers, and robust switching effect is observed. Finally, I will discuss the future work to realize nanoscale magnetization switching for high capacity and low-power data storage by integrating pragmatically designed plasmonic lenses.
Bio:
Feng Cheng received the BS degree in Opto-electronic engineering from Tianjing University (Tianjin, China) in 2014. He is currently working in the research group of Prof. Yongmin Liu. His research interests include nanophotonics, metamaterials and plasmonics.