Regensburg 2013 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus
MA 48: Spin-dependent Transport Phenomena
MA 48.7: Vortrag
Freitag, 15. März 2013, 11:15–11:30, H23
Spin relaxation in ultrathin metallic films: Anisotropy and surface-state effects — •Phivos Mavropoulos, Nguyen H. Long, Bernd Zimmermann, Yuriy Mokrousov, and Stefan Blügel — Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA, D-52425 Jülich
We investigate the relaxation of conduction electron spins in nonmagnetic ultrathin metallic films. Within the framework of the Elliott-Yafet theory we calculate the spin-mixing parameter b2 and the scattering matrix elements off adatoms. We show that the reduced dimensionality always leads to a significant anisotropy [1] of the relaxation rate with respect to the relative direction between the injected electron spin polarization and the crystallographic film axes. We further reveal the fundamental influence of surface states creating spin-polarization fields due to the Rashba effect. In certain cases we find unexpected even-odd effects with respect to the number of layers in the film as well as formation of spin-flip hot spots in monovalent metals. For our calculations we employ the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker Green function method [2,3] within the local density approximation to density-functional theory. Funding from the DFG project MO 1731/3-1 is acknowledged.
[1] B. Zimmermann et al. PRL (2012, in press); arXiv:1210.1801.
[2] N. Papanikolaou, R. Zeller, and P.H. Dederichs, JPCM 14, 2799 (2002); see also http://www.kkr-gf.org.
[3] S. Heers, Ph.D. Thesis, RWTH Aachen (2011); Online at:
http://darwin.bth.rwth-aachen.de/opus3/volltexte/2011/3827