Spin-dependent electron dynamics in front of a ferromagnetic surface

Exchange splitting and dynamics of image-potential states in front of a 3 monolayer iron film on Cu(100) have been studied with time-, energy-, and spin-resolved bichromatic two-photon photoemission. For the first image-potential state n=1 we observe an exchange splitting of 56 +/- 10 meV and spin-dependent lifetimes of 16 +/- 2 fs for majority-spin and of 11 +/- 2 fs for minority-spin electrons, respectively. The time-resolved studies of both the population and the linewidth of image-potential states manifest that at the magnetic surface not only inelastic but also quasielastic scattering processes are spin dependent.