Texture-dependent all-optical switching in ferromagnetic films via stochastic nucleation of nanoscale domains

This data collection contains data underlying the results published in the accompanying publication. Below is a short explanation of the experiment and the collection's content. Background: Controlling magnetic textures at ever smaller length and time scales is of key fundamental and technological interest. Achieving nanoscale control often relies on finding an external stimulus that is able to act on that small length scales, which is highly challenging. A promising alternative is to achieve nanoscale control using the inhomogeneity of the magnetic texture itself. Using a multilayered ferromagnetic Pt/Co/Pt thin-film structure as a model system, we employ a magnetic force microscope to investigate the change in magnetic nanotextures induced by circularly polarized picosecond laser pulses. Starting from a saturated magnetic state, we find stochastic nucleation of complex nanotextured domain networks. In particular, the growth of these domains depends not only on their macroscopic magnetization but also on the complexity of the domain texture. This helicity and texture-dependent effect contrasts with the typical homogeneous growth of magnetic domains initiated by an effective magnetic field of a circularly polarized laser pulse. We corroborate our findings with a stochastic model for the nucleation of magnetic domains, in which the nucleation and annihilation probability not only depends on the helicity of light but also on the relative magnetization orientation of neighboring domains. Our results establish a new approach to investigate ultrafast nanoscale magnetism and photo-excitation across first-order phase transitions. This collection includes the source files for the figures and extended data figures presented in the manuscript titled "Texture-dependent all-optical switching in ferromagnetic films via stochastic nucleation of nanoscale domains." Figures 1 through 3 display results obtained from magnetic force microscopy and simulations. Figure 4 provides the source data for the theoretical model. In version 2, we updated the numbering of extended data figures and added source data for Fig. 3.