A pair of circularly polarized laser pulses of opposite helicities are shown to control the route of spin reorientation phase transition in the rare-earth antiferromagnetic orthoferrite (Sm0.55Tb0.45)FeO3. The route can be efficiently controlled by the delay between the pulses and the sample temperature. Simulations employing previously published models of laser-induced spin dynamics in orthoferrites failed to reproduce the experimental results. We suggest that the failure is due to neglected temperature dependence of the antiferromagnetic resonance damping in the material. Taking into account the experimentally deduced temperature dependence of the damping, we obtained good agreement between the simulations and the experiment.
