Nonlinear optical quantum theory of demagnetization in L1 ₀ FePt and FePd

It is now well established that a laser pulse can demagnetize a ferromagnet. However, for a long time, it has not had an analytic theory because it falls into neither nonlinear optics (NLOs) nor magnetism. Here we attempt to fill this gap by developing a nonlinear optical theory centered on the spin moment, instead of the more popular susceptibility. We first employ group theory to pin down the lowest order of the nonzero spin moment in a centrosymmetric system to be the second order, where the second-order density matrix contains four terms of sum frequency generation and four terms of difference frequency generation (DFG). By tracing over the product of the density matrix and the spin matrix, we are now able to compute the light-induced spin moment. We apply our theory to FePt and FePd, two most popular magnetic recording materials with identical crystal and electronic structures. We find that the theory can clearly distinguish the difference between those two similar systems. Specifically, we show that FePt has a stronger light-induced spin moment than FePd, in agreement with our real-time ultrafast demagnetization simulation and the experimental results. Among all the possible NLO processes, DFGs produce the largest spin moment change, a manifestation of optical rectification. Our research lays a solid theoretical foundation for femtomagnetism, so the light-induced spin moment reduction can now be computed and compared among different systems, without time-consuming real-time calculations, representing a significant step forward.