All-optical vectorial control of multistate magnetization through anisotropy-mediated spin-orbit coupling

Abstract

The interplay between light and magnetism is considered as a promising solution to fully steer multidimensional magnetic oscillations/vectors, facilitating the development of all-optical multilevel recording/memory technologies. To date, impressive progress in multistate magnetization instead of a binary level has been witnessed by primarily resorting to double laser beam excitation. Yet, the control mechanisms are limited to specific magnetic medium or intricate optical configuration as well as overlooking the crystallographic architecture of the media and the polarization-phase linkage of the light fields. Here, we theoretically present a novel all-optical strategy for generating arbitrary multistate magnetization through the inverse Faraday effect. This is achieved by strongly focusing a single vortex-phase configured beam with circular polarization onto the anisotropic magnetic medium. By judiciously tuning the topological charge effect, the optical anisotropic effect, and the anisotropic optomagnetic effect, the light-induced magnetic vector can be flexibly redistributed between its transverse and longitudinal components, thus enabling orientation-unlimited multilevel magnetization control. In this optomagnetic process, we also reveal the role of anisotropy-mediated spin-orbit coupling, another physical mechanism that enables the effective translation of the angular momentum of light fields to the magnetic system. Furthermore, the conceptual paradigm of all-optical multistate magnetization is verified. Our findings show great prospect in multidimensional high-density optomagnetic recording and memory devices and also in high-speed information processing science and technology.