Ab Initio Investigation of the Elliott-Yafet Electron-Phonon Mechanism in Laser-Induced Ultrafast Demagnetization
2011
Abstract
The spin-flip (SF) Eliashberg function is calculated from first principles for ferromagnetic Ni to accurately establish the contribution of Elliott-Yafet electron-phonon SF scattering to Ni''s femtosecond laser-driven demagnetization. This is used to compute the SF probability and demagnetization rate for laser-created thermalized as well as nonequilibrium electron distributions.
Increased SF probabilities are found for thermalized electrons, but the induced demagnetization rate is extremely small. A larger demagnetization rate is obtained for nonequilibrium electron distributions, but its contribution is too small to account for femtosecond demagnetization.