Pico - Nano - Mikro: Going small, fast and dilute with soft x-rays

Program Description

Because of the wavelength of x-rays, microscopes at synchrotrons are great tools to learn about physics on the nanoscale. In addition, one can make use of the fact that synchrotrons produce short x-ray pulses and address dynamical processes with a few tens of picosecond temporal resolution. At SSRL we developed a dedicated microscopy setup that allows us to study small changes in the magnetization (~1-10 ppm) with 30 nm spatial and about 20 ps temporal resolution. Using this microscope we were able, for the first time, to observe the injection of a spin polarized current from a ferromagnet into a non-magnetic metal. Other examples that will be discussed in this talk are the evolution of spin waves from nano contact or the behavior of different materials in a microwave cavity in ferromagnetic resonance on the nanoscale.