title: Ab Initio investigation of the Elliott-Yafet electron-phonon mechanism in laser-induced ultrafast demagnetization.
abstract: The spin-flip (SF) Eliashberg function is calculated from first principles for ferromagnetic Ni to accurately establish the contribution of Elliott-Yafet electron-phonon SF scattering to Ni's femtosecond laser-driven demagnetization. This is used to compute the SF probability and demagnetization rate for laser-created thermalized as well as nonequilibrium electron distributions. Increased SF probabilities are found for thermalized electrons, but the induced demagnetization rate is extremely small. A larger demagnetization rate is obtained for nonequilibrium electron distributions, but its contribution is too small to account for femtosecond demagnetization.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Uppsala University, Sweden. karel.carva@fysik.uu.se
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Carva
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Battiato
authors.forename: P M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Oppeneer