Hermann Dürr - Controlling spins in space and time

Magnetism is a quantum effect that has fascinated mankind for millennia and also led to many modern-day applications, very prominently in information processing and storage. Now available polarized soft X-ray pulses from X-FELs with sub-100 fs duration allow observing magnetic interactions at work in their natural length and timescales. I will show how the challenges for performing time-resolved XMCD at the Linac Coherent Light Source have recently been overcome and give an overview how such studies help to understand the fundamental speed limits for nanoscale spin motion.