Longitudinal Evolution of the Magnetization in Nanostructures

From the discovery of subpicosecond demagnetization, the longitudinal magnetization dynamics becomes a fundamentally challenging topic with a potentially high impact for future spintronics, data storage and manipulation. We consider recent advance in the field of the longitudinal magnetization dynamics in nanostructures. We focus on application of the phenomenological approach for description of the longitudinal magnetization dynamics. Although we discuss different realizations, namely, laser-induced ultrafast magnetization dynamics in heterostructures, the relevance of the longitudinal relaxation to the damping of domain walls in ultrathin magnetic films and a novel method of the extraction of the exchange stiffness in ultrathin ferromagnetic films based on ideas of low-dimensional magnetism, these problems are unified within the concept of the longitudinal magnetization dynamics. The proposed method for the extraction of the exchange stiffness becomes a standard characterization tool in the community working in thin film magnetism.