Extreme Domain Wall Speeds under Ultrafast Optical Excitation.

Time-resolved ultrafast EUV magnetic scattering was used to test a recent prediction of >10  km/s domain wall speeds by optically exciting a magnetic sample with a nanoscale labyrinthine domain pattern. Ultrafast distortion of the diffraction pattern was observed at markedly different timescales compared to the magnetization quenching. The diffraction pattern distortion shows a threshold dependence with laser fluence, not seen for magnetization quenching, consistent with a picture of domain wall motion with pinning sites.

Megahertz-rate ultrafast X-ray scattering and holographic imaging at the European XFEL.

The advent of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) has revolutionized fundamental science, from atomic to condensed matter physics, from chemistry to biology, giving researchers access to X-rays with unprecedented brightness, coherence and pulse duration. All XFEL facilities built until recently provided X-ray pulses at a relatively low repetition rate, with limited data statistics. Here, results from the first megahertz-repetition-rate X-ray scattering experiments at the Spectroscopy and Coherent Scattering (SCS) instrument of the European XFEL are presented.

Near-unity spin Hall ratio in Ni Cu alloys.

We report a large spin Hall effect in the 3 transition metal alloy Ni Cu for ∈ {0.3, 0.75}, detected via the ferromagnetic resonance of a permalloy (Py = NiFe) film deposited in a bilayer with the alloy.

Nonequilibrium quasiparticles and 2e periodicity in single-Cooper-pair transistors.

We have fabricated single-Cooper-pair transistors in which the spatial profile of the superconducting gap energy was controlled by oxygen doping. The profile dramatically affects the switching current vs gate voltage curve of the transistor, changing its period from 1e to 2e. A model based on nonequilibrium quasiparticles in the leads explains our results, including the observation that even devices with a clean 2e period are "poisoned" by small numbers of these quasiparticles.