A new, specially-fabricated magnetic material developed at the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), together with the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, has shown to be the fastest magnetic switch to date, breaking records in the process.
The CRANN researchers used femtosecond laser systems located in its Photonics Research Laboratory to actuate, switching and re-switching the orientation of the new magnetic material in only trillionths of a second - or in the range of picoseconds. The speed of this magnetic switch is approximately six times faster than the previous record and about 100 times faster than the clock speed of today's personal computers.
Researchers report this new magnetic material in the Physical Review Letters in a report titled "Ultrafast Double Pulse All-Optical Reswitching of a Ferrimagnet," originally published last April 27.
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