On the way to the fastest possible computing speed

The ability to alter the magnetic configuration of a material on femtosecond timescales would allow computers to operate a thousand to a million times faster. In this work we report on a new quantum-mechanical phenomenon predicted by our simulations, which we named OISTR. The OISTR mechanism uses ultrastrong, ultrashort, optical laser pulses to locally magnetize and de- magnetize particular atoms in just a few femtoseconds. These predictions have since been verified by experiments.