Ultra-low damping insulating magnetic thin films get perpendicular.

A magnetic material combining low losses and large perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) is still a missing brick in the magnonic and spintronic fields. We report here on the growth of ultrathin Bismuth doped YFeO (BiYIG) films on GdGaO (GGG) and substituted GGG (sGGG) (111) oriented substrates. A fine tuning of the PMA is obtained using both epitaxial strain and growth-induced anisotropies.

Pump-probe experiments at the TEMPO beamline using the low-α operation mode of Synchrotron SOLEIL.

The SOLEIL synchrotron radiation source is regularly operated in special filling modes dedicated to pump-probe experiments. Among others, the low-α mode operation is characterized by shorter pulse duration and represents the natural bridge between 50 ps synchrotron pulses and femtosecond experiments. Here, the capabilities in low-α mode of the experimental set-ups developed at the TEMPO beamline to perform pump-probe experiments with soft X-rays based on photoelectron or photon detection are presented.

Giant Rashba effect at the topological surface of PrGe revealing antiferromagnetic spintronics.

Rashba spin-orbit splitting in the magnetic materials opens up a new perspective in the field of spintronics. Here, we report a giant Rashba spin-orbit splitting on the PrGe [010] surface in the paramagnetic phase with Rashba coefficient α  = 5 eVÅ. We find that α can be tuned in this system as a function of temperature at different magnetic phases.

Preventing carbon contamination of optical devices for X-rays: the effect of oxygen on photon-induced dissociation of CO on platinum.

Platinum is one of the most common coatings used to optimize mirror reflectivity in soft X-ray beamlines. Normal operation results in optics contamination by carbon-based molecules present in the residual vacuum of the beamlines. The reflectivity reduction induced by a carbon layer at the mirror surface is a major problem in synchrotron radiation sources.