Investigation of spin orbit torque driven dynamics in ferromagnetic heterostructures

TL;DR

This study uses time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect measurements to analyze spin orbit torque-driven magnetization dynamics in ferromagnetic heterostructures, revealing the dominant role of field-like torque and the relationship between oscillation amplitude and torque ratio.

Contribution

It provides a detailed experimental analysis of the separate effects of field-like and damping-like spin orbit torques in ferromagnetic bilayers, with consistent extraction of effective fields across measurement methods.

Findings

Field-like torque dominates initial magnetization oscillations.

Damping-like torque determines steady-state magnetization.

Oscillation amplitude ratio linearly relates to torque ratio.

Abstract

We use time-resolved (TR) measurements based on the polar magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) to study the magnetization dynamics excited by spin orbit torques in Py (Permalloy)/Pt and Ta/CoFeB bilayers. The analysis reveals that the field-like (FL) spin orbit torque (SOT) dominates the amplitude of the first oscillation cycle of the magnetization precession and the damping-like (DL) torque determines the final steady-state magnetization. In our bilayer samples, we have extracted the effective fields, hFL and hDL, of the two SOTs from the time-resolved magnetization oscillation spectrum. The extracted values are in good agreement with those extracted from time-integrated DCMOKE measurements, suggesting that the SOTs do not change at high frequencies. We also find that the amplitude ratio of the first oscillation to steady state is linearly proportional to the ratio hFL/hDL. The first oscillation amplitude is inversely proportional to, whereas the steady state value is independent of, the applied external field along the current direction.