| AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Division | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session MI-WeM |
| Session: | Fundamental Problems in Magnetism |
| Presenter: | Elio Vescovo, Brookhaven National Laboratory |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
For fundamental and technological reasons materials with a spin-split electronic band structure in proximity of the Fermi level are highly attractive. The possibility of separately manipulating the two spin channels introduces novel functional behaviors without counterpart in the corresponding spin-degenerate systems. A promising approach in this field consists in the exploitation of the spin-orbit interaction, which couples spin and orbital degrees of freedom. The Rashba interaction offers particularly interesting perspectives: at the surface of a crystalline material the breaking of the full translational symmetry gives rise to an effective (Rashba) electric field which splits in k-space the valence electrons with opposite spin orientations. For heavy elements, such as Bi, the Rashba interaction results in spin-polarized surface bands, detectable in angle-resolved photoemission experiments [1]. In this talk various cases of such systems will be presented. Bi-Ag(110) surface alloy allows to study the anisotropy of splitting induced by the anisotropic electric fields of the (110) – surface. The system Bi-Ag(111)/ Fe(110) provides direct evidence of the interplay between the Rashba splitting of the Bi-Ag alloy and the ferromagnetic splitting of the Fe bands.
[1] Yu. M. Koroteev, G. Bihlmayer, J. E. Gayone, E. V. Chulkov, S. Blügel, P. M. Echenique, and Ph. Hofmann, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 046403 (2004); T. Hirahara, T. Nagao, I. Matsuda, G. Bihlmayer, E. V. Chulkov, Yu. M. Koroteev, P. M. Echenique, M. Saito, and S. Hasegawa, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 146803 (2006).