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Laser-induced topological spin switching at room temperature in the van der Waals ferromagnet Fe3GaTe2
Charlie W F Freeman1,2,3, Woohyun Cho4, Paul S Keatley5
1London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, London, UK.
Abstract:
We demonstrate room-temperature nucleation and manipulation of topological spin textures in the van der Waals (vdW) ferromagnet Fe3GaTe2 using laser-pulse excitation. Rapid laser-induced heating followed by cooling enables access to the skyrmion bubble state at low fields and drives reversible switching between this state and labyrinth domains. The switching requires a minimum of about 20 pulses, and further reduction of the pulse number is limited by sample degradation at higher fluence. The nucleation occurs at magnetic induction fields as low as 5 mT, which substantially lowers the field requirement compared to slow field-cooling approaches. Micromagnetic simulations attribute this switching to the thermal cycle induced by the laser. Our findings establish vdW ferromagnets as promising candidates for room-temperature, laser-controlled, non-volatile memory storage applications.
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