  Heat and disorder are opponents of magnetism. This fact, expressed in Curie's
law established more than a century ago, holds even in the highly
non-equilibrium interaction of ultra-intense laser pulses with magnetic matter.
In contradiction to this, here we demonstrate that optical excitation of a
ferromagnet can abrogate the link between temperature and order and observe 100
femtosecond class laser pulses to drive a reduction in spin entropy,
concomitant to an increase in spin polarization and magnetic moment persisting
after relaxation back to local charge equilibrium. This both establishes
disorder as an unexpected resource for magnetic control at ultrafast times and,
by the provision of a purely electronic mechanism that does not involve
reconfiguration of the crystal lattice, suggests a novel scheme for spin-based
signal processing and information storage significantly faster than current
methodology.
