Manipulation of ferromagnets via the spin-selective optical Stark effect

Abstract

We investigate the nonresonant all-optical switching of magnetization. We treat the inverse Faraday effect (IFE) theoretically in terms of the spin-selective optical Stark effect for linearly or circularly polarized light. In the dilute magnetic semiconductors (Ga,Mn)As, strong laser pulses below the band gap induce effective magnetic fields of several teslas in a direction which depends on the magnetization direction as well as the light polarization and direction. Our theory demonstrates that the polarized light catalyzes the angular momentum transfer between the lattice and the magnetization. © 2013 American Physical Society.