Optical control of Magnetic Metamaterials

功能磁性组对纳米结构材料和器件的磁性有着浓厚的兴趣。我们最近开发了一种使用磁力显微镜将我们选择的任何磁性图案写入磁性纳米结构阵列的方法。这种类型的结构对于神经形态计算硬件来说是有趣的，其中大规模并行计算可以基于从定义的起点开始的磁粒子网络的集体响应。然而，读取和写入单个磁粒子目前是缓慢的和技术上棘手的。该项目的目的是制造磁粒子网络，然后使用激光诱导的局部加热技术“读/写”状态。这将是一种更快、更可扩展的初始化状态的方法。纳米结构的大小将使磁性结构在环境条件下是静态的，但在激光的选择性加热下是可切换的。该技术与新兴的硬盘技术热辅助磁记录（hot - assisted magnetic recording）类似，可以将容量提高到50tb。

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.