title: Spin oscillations in antiferromagnetic NiO triggered by circularly polarized light.
abstract: Coherent spin oscillations were nonthermally induced by circularly polarized pulses in the fully compensated antiferromagnet NiO. This effect is attributed to the action of the effective magnetic field generated by an inverse Faraday effect on the spins. The novelty of this mechanism is that spin oscillations are driven by the time derivative of the effective magnetic field which acts even on "pure" antiferromagnets with zero net magnetic moment in the ground state. The measured frequencies (1.07 THz and 140 GHz) correspond to the out-of-plane and in-plane modes of antiferromagnetic spin oscillations.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan.
authors.forename: Takuya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Satoh
authors.forename: Sung-Jin
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Ryugo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Iida
authors.forename: Tsutomu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shimura
authors.forename: Kazuo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kuroda
authors.forename: Hiroaki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ueda
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ueda
authors.forename: B A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Ivanov
authors.forename: Franco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Nori
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fiebig