A central prospect of antiferromagnetic spintronics is to exploit magnetic properties that are unavailable with ferromagnets. However, this poses the challenge of accessing such properties for readout and control. To this end, light-induced manipulation of the transient ground state, e.g. by changing the magnetic anisotropy potential, opens promising pathways towards ultrafast deterministic control of antiferromagnetism. In this talk I will show how we use this approach to trigger a coherent rotation of the entire long-range antiferromagnetic spin arrangement about a crystalline axis in GdRh2Si2 and demonstrate deterministic control of this rotation upon ultrafast optical excitation. I will also show that our observations can be explained by a displacive excitation of the Gd spins' local anisotropy potential by the optical excitation, allowing for a full description of this transient magnetic anisotropy potential. See also: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.01398
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