Observation of terahertz-induced dynamical spin canting in orthoferrite magnon by magnetorefractive probing

Abstract

Intense terahertz pulses offer unique pathway to resonantly drive the correlated spin systems up to the nonlinear regime. However, detection of such nonlinear spin dynamics often suffers from the small signal amplitude that can be easily hindered by the linear background components. In order to efficiently extract the nonlinear signals, here we demonstrate that magnetooptical effect can be utilized. We excite spin precession in orthoferrite YFeO3 by the magnetic field of intense terahertz pulse and probe its dynamics by transient transmissivity change in the near infrared. The observed waveforms contain quasi-ferromagnetic-mode magnon oscillation and its second harmonics with a comparably strong amplitude. The result can be explained by dielectric function derived from magnetorefractive Hamiltonian. We reveal that the strong second harmonic signal microscopically originates from the dynamics of the quasi-ferromagnetic mode magnon at nonlinear regime, wherein spin canting angle periodically oscillates.