Abstrakt
Excitation of a metallic ferromagnet such as Ni with an intensive femtosecond laser pulse causes an ultrafast demagnetization within approximately 300 fs. It was proposed that the ultrafast demagnetization measured in femtosecond magneto-optical experiments could be due to relativistic light-induced processes.
We perform an ab initio investigation of the influence of relativistic effects on the magneto-optical response of Ni. To this end, first, we develop a response theory formulation of the additional appearing ultrarelativistic terms in the Foldy-Wouthuysen transformed Dirac Hamiltonian due to the electromagnetic field, and second, we compute the influence of relativistic light-induced spin-flip transitions on the magneto-optics.
Our ab initio calculations of relativistic spin-flip optical excitations predict that these can give only a very small contribution ({= 0.1%) to the laser-induced magnetization change in Ni.