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Harnessing Plasmonic Heating for Switching in Antiferromagnets

H. Y. Yuan1,*, Yizheng Wu2, and Olena Gomonay3

  • *Contact author: hyyuan@zju.edu.cn
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 206702 – Published 21 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/cx1z-rt2d

Abstract

Heat waste is a bottleneck in the development of green information technologies and much effort has been devoted to suppress the heating effect in both electronic and spintronic devices. Here, we take an alternative approach and show that controllable heating at the nanoscale can actually benefit information processing. In particular, we study a hybrid nanostructure consisting of a metallic square frame and an antiferromagnetic (AFM) thin film and show that the plasmonic heating can reversibly switch two perpendicularly oriented AFM domains without the assistance of magnetic fields and electric currents. The required switching energy is at the order 1 nJ, 3 to 6 orders of magnitude lower than the current-driven AFM switching. The physical mechanism arises from the thermal-induced strain fields inside the frame, which couple to and manipulate the magnetic orientation via magnetoelastic effect. The strain field direction can be well controlled by selectively exciting the longitudinal and transverse plasmon modes by varying the polarization of the waves, which readily allows for a reversible switching of the AFM vector. Our findings provide tremendous opportunities for optically manipulating the magnetism with ultralow energy consumption and may further promote the interdisciplinary study of photonics, acoustics, and spintronics.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 206702– Published 21 May, 2026
  • Received 10 December 2025
  • Accepted 23 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

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