English

Nonmonotonic inelastic tunneling spectra due to surface spin excitations in ferromagnetic junctions

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2011-08-24 v6

Abstract

The paper addresses inelastic spin-flip tunneling accompanied by surface spin excitations (magnons) in ferromagnetic junctions. The inelastic tunneling current is proportional to the magnon density of states which is energy-independent for the surface waves and, for this reason, cannot account for the bias-voltage dependence of the observed inelastic tunneling spectra. This paper shows that the bias-voltage dependence of the tunneling spectra can arise from the tunneling matrix elements of the electron-magnon interaction. These matrix elements are derived from the Coulomb exchange interaction using the itinerant-electron model of magnon-assisted tunneling. The results for the inelastic tunneling spectra, based on the nonequilibrium Green's function calculations, are presented for both parallel and antiparallel magnetizations in the ferromagnetic leads.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0401460,
  title  = {Nonmonotonic inelastic tunneling spectra due to surface spin excitations in ferromagnetic junctions},
  author = {G. Tkachov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0401460},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

9 pages, 4 figures, version as published