Regensburg 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 31: Surface Magnetism / Magnetic Imaging II

MA 31.4: Vortrag

Donnerstag, 25. März 2010, 16:00–16:15, H23

Non-collinear magnetism in the Mn double layer on W(110) — •Silke Schröder, Paolo Ferriani, and Stefan Heinze — Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics, University of Kiel, Leibnizstr. 15, 24098 Kiel, Germany

The discovery of a homochiral spin-spiral state for a monolayer (ML) Mn on W(110) [1] has dramatically demonstrated that magnetism in ultrathin films can be extremely complex. Heisenberg exchange, magnetic anisotropy and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction compete and span a vast magnetic phase space that is still largely unexplored. Recently the double layer (DL) of Mn on W(110) has been studied by spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy [2] and a spin-spiral propagating along the [001] direction has been found. Surprisingly, the finding of a short period hints at a ferromagnetic exchange interaction in the Mn DL, on the contrary to what was found in the Mn ML.

To shed light onto this issue, we studied the magnetic properties of the Mn DL on W(110) by means of density functional theory calculation, using the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FLAPW) method. We considered several possible magnetic configurations that revealed an antiferromagnetic nearest neighbour exchange and performed spin-spiral calculations to explore the magnetic phase space. We found a non-collinear magnetic ground state. By including spin-orbit coupling we investigated the influence of the magnetic anisotropy and the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction.

[1] M. Bode et al., Nature 447, 190 (2007)

[2] Y. Yoshida et al., in preparation