High-Field Nonlinear Terahertz Conductivities of Iron Ultrathin Films

Abstract

The electronic transport behavior in ferromagnetic thin films critically dictates the functionality and efficiency of devices in spintronics and modern materials science. This work characterizes terahertz (THz) responses and nonlinear conductivities of Fe ultrathin films under high-field THz excitation. We demonstrated that different nonlinearities are present for two different thickness samples. For a 2 nm thick Fe film, as the peak THz electric field was increased to 369 kV/cm, the THz transmittance of Fe films generally decreased. However, for the 4 nm thick Fe film, the THz transmittance is almost field strength independent. This result is correlated with the conductivity variations induced by carrier transport processes. The real part of the complex conductivity for the 2 nm thick film increased significantly with the THz electric field, while the 4 nm thick film showed negligible dependence. In addition, we extracted the frequency-domain complex conductivity of the Fe thin films and used the Drude or Drude–Smith model to explain the distinct behaviors between the two thickness samples under intense THz fields, mainly associated with the surface morphology. This work aims to elucidate the transport properties of Fe films in the THz frequency range. Our findings lay a crucial foundation for the design and development of future high-performance THz spintronic functional devices.