Optical control of Magnetic Metamaterials

The functional magnetism group has a strong interest in the magnetic properties of nanostructured materials and devices. We have recently developed a method of writing any magnetic pattern we choose into magnetic nanostructured arrays using a magnetic force microscope. Structures of this type are interesting for neuromorphic computing hardware, where massively parallel computation can be based on the collective response of a magnetic particle network from a defined starting point. However, reading and writing of individual magnetic particles is currently slow and technologically intractable.

The aim of this project will be to fabricate magnetic particle networks and then "read/write" states using a laser-induced local heating technique. This would be a faster and more scalable method to initialise states. The nanostructures will be of a size such that the magnetic structure is static under ambient conditions, but switchable when selectively heated by laser light. This technique is similar to heat assisted magnetic recording, which is an emerging hard disk technology, boosting capacities to the 50 TB level.