Terahertz light-driven spin-lattice control: A new potential path to faster and more efficient data storage

An international team of researchers from the University of Cologne (Germany), Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands), the Ioffe Institute and the Prokhorov General Physics Institute (Russia) has discovered a new mechanism to control spin-lattice interaction using ultrashort terahertz (THz) pulses (terahertz means 1012 hertz). This mechanism can open up new and elegant ways to control propagation of spin waves and thus make an important step to conceptually new technologies of data processing in future. The results have been published in Science.