All-optical switching on a nanometer scale

Ultrafast light-driven control of magnetization on the nanometer length scale is key to achieve competitive bit sizes in next generation data storage technology. Researchers at Max Born Institute in Berlin and of the large scale facility Elettra in Trieste, Italy, have successfully demonstrated the ultrafast emergence of all-optical switching by generating a nanometer scale grating by interference of two pulses in the extreme ultraviolet spectral range.