Thermally Assisted All‐Optical Helicity Dependent Magnetic Switching in Amorphous Fe_100–xTb_x Alloy Films

All-optical switching (AOS) in ferrimagnetic Fe100-xTbx alloys is presented. AOS is witnessed below, above, and in samples without a magnetic compensation point. It is found that AOS is associated with laser heating up to the Curie temperature and intimately linked to a low remanent sample magnetization. Above a threshold magnetization of 220 emu/cc helicity dependent AOS is replaced by pure thermal demagnetization. As a service to our authors and readers, this journal provides supporting information supplied by the authors. Such materials are peer reviewed and may be re-organized for online delivery, but are not copy-edited or typeset. Technical support issues arising from supporting information (other than missing files) should be addressed to the authors. Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.