Recent studies in thermal activation and spin waves

Some recent results in computational approaches to thermally activated fast reversal in magnetic recording media are reviewed. In particular, recent results reported in the simulation of pulsed-field-induced magnetisation reversal and thermal activation of spin waves are described. The short time scale breakdown of the Arrhenius–Néel law for a single moment is demonstrated and explained in terms of the dynamics of the precessional motion. The variation in response as a function of the damping parameter is found to be an important factor determining the remanent magnetisation for a given pulse width. The effects of interactions between moments are described, including the apparent increase in effective damping. It is shown that interactions between moments can be described in terms of thermally excited spin waves. The spectrum of relaxation times for systems consisting of coupled moments is explained in terms of the thermal excitation of spin waves.     

Magnetic relaxation phenomena in a CuMn spin glass

Experiments on the temperature and time dependence of the response function and the field cooled magnetisation of a Cu(Mn) spin glass at temperatures below the zero field spin glass temperature are used to explore the non-equilibrium nature of the underlying spin configuration. The results imply that a certain spin configuration is imprinted on the system as the temperature is decreased at a constant cooling rate. The cooling rate governs the magnitude of the FC magnetisation ((H,T)). Any intermittent halt at a constant temperature, , imprints an extended spin configuration, a process that is reflected e.g. in a downward relaxation of . On continued cooling at the same rate, the magnitude of (T) remains at a lower level than that of a continuous cooling curve. These results are put into the context of the corresponding behaviour of the response function as observed in measurements of the relaxation of the zero field cooled magnetisation. Received 27 October 1998 and Received in final form 30 November 1998     

Flux relaxation phenomena in the presence of weak AC magnetic fields

Relaxation of flux profile and magnetisation due to non-linear vortex diffusion in a superconducting slab settled in a parallel-to-the-surface DC and superimposed weak AC magnetic fields is studied for several kinds of the non-linear vortex diffusivity, corresponding to different possible shapes of the current–voltage characteristics of the superconductor. The evolution of the dynamic vortex response on applied weak AC field due to flux relaxation process is studied and relaxation characteristics of the AC magnetic susceptibility are calculated. The flux creep rate and magnetisation decay are shown to be enhanced significantly in the case of strongly non-linear regime of vortex diffusion if even rather weak AC magnetic field is applied. The possibility of ‘dynamical melting' of the vortex lattice occurring at rather high levels of the induced current density (j>j_c) is also demonstrated.     

Dynamics of Skyrmion crystals in metallic thin films

We study the collective dynamics of the Skyrmion crystal in thin films of ferromagnetic metals resulting from the nontrivial Skyrmion topology. It is shown that the current-driven motion of the crystal reduces the topological Hall effect and the Skyrmion trajectories bend away from the direction of the electric current (the Skyrmion Hall effect). We find a new dissipation mechanism in noncollinear spin textures that can lead to a much faster spin relaxation than Gilbert damping, calculate the dispersion of phonons in the Skyrmion crystal, and discuss the effects of impurity pinning of Skyrmions.     

Spin diffusion and nuclear spin-lattice relaxation in irradiated solids: a multiple-pulse NQR study

We present a detailed theoretical and experimental NQR multiple-pulse spin-locking study of spin-lattice relaxation and spin diffusion processes in the presence of paramagnetic impurities in solids. The relaxation function of the nuclear spin system at the beginning of the relaxation process is given by exp , where T_1ρ is spin-lattice relaxation time in rotating frame and =d/6, d is the sample dimensionality. Then the relaxation proceeds asymptotically to an exponential function of time, which was attributed to the spin-diffusion regime. Using the experimental data obtained from the analysis of those two relaxation regimes in γ-irradiated powdered NaClO₃, spin diffusion coefficient has been determined and the radius of the diffusion barrier has been estimated.     

The aqueous reference for ESR oximetry

The interaction of molecular oxygen with derivatives of nitroxide EPR spin labels has been investigated using nuclear spin-relaxation spectroscopy in aqueous and nonaqueous solvents. The proton spin-lattice relaxation rate induced by oxygen provides a measure of the local concentration of oxygen, which we find is dependent on solvent. In water, the hydrophobic effect increases the local concentration of oxygen in the nonpolar portions of solute molecules. For nitroxides reduced to the hydroxylamine in aqueous solutions, we find that the local concentration of oxygen is approximately twice that associated with a free diffusion hard sphere limit, while in octane, this effect is absent. These results show that nitroxide based ESR oximetry may suffer a reference concentration shift of order a factor of two if the aqueous nitroxide spectrum or relaxation is used as the reference.     

The observation of inherent spin Seebeck effect in Rh/YIG hybrid structure

Rhodium (Rh) is a 4d metal possessing a large spin orbit coupling strength and spin-Hall conductivity with a very small magnetic susceptibility, implying an insignificant magnetic proximity effect (MPE). We report here the observation of longitudinal spin Seebeck effect (LSSE) using Rh as a normal metal. A Rh film was sputtered on nanometer thick YIG films of highly crystalline nature and extremely low magnetic damping to obtain Rh/YIG hybrid structure. A clear thermal voltage V_th (SSE voltage) was obtained when a temperature gradient was applied on the Rh/YIG hybrid. The Rh film showed a very weak anomalous Hall resistance and the magneto-resistive testing clearly ruled out the magnetization of the Rh films via MPE. The anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) revealed a clear spin hall magnetoresistance (SMR) signal in Rh film implying a purely intrinsic spin current generation, free from any parasitic magnetic effects. The work can open a new window in the study of pure and uncontaminated spin current, generated in ferromagnetic insulators, using Rh as spin current detector.     

Intrinsic electron spin relaxation due to the D'yakonov–Perel' mechanism in monolayer MoS2

Intrinsic electron spin relaxation due to the D'yakonov–Perel' mechanism is studied in monolayer Molybdenum Disulphide. An intervalley in-plane spin relaxation channel is revealed due to the opposite effective magnetic fields perpendicular to the monolayer Molybdenum Disulphide plane in the two valleys together with the intervalley electron–phonon scattering. The intervalley electron–phonon scattering is always in the weak scattering limit, which leads to a rapid decrease of the in-plane spin relaxation time with increasing temperature. A decrease of the in-plane spin relaxation time with the increase of the electron density is also shown.     

Time resolved magnetization dynamics of ultrathin Fe(001) films: spin-pumping and two-magnon scattering

The time-resolved magnetic response of ultrathin epitaxial Fe(001) films grown on GaAs(001) and covered by Au, Pd, and Cr capping layers was investigated by time and spatially resolved Kerr effect measurements. The magnetization was excited by an in-plane magnetic field pulse using the transient internal field generated at a Schottky barrier while the wavelength of the excitation (resonant mode) was roughly 4 microm. Each of the three cap layers affected the spin relaxation in a unique way. Au cap layers resulted in the bulk Gilbert damping of the Fe film. Pd cap layers caused an additional Gilbert damping due to spin-pump or spin-sink effects. Cr cap layers lead to a strong extrinsic damping which can be described by two-magnon scattering. In this case the strength of the extrinsic damping can be controlled by a field induced shift of the spin wave manifold with respect to the excited k vector.     

Gauge theory approach for diffusive and precessional spin dynamics in a two-dimensional electron gas

We develop a gauge theory for diffusive and precessional spin dynamics in a two-dimensional electron gas. Our approach reveals a direct connection between the absence of the equilibrium spin current and a strong anisotropy in the spin relaxation: both effects arise if spin-orbit coupling is reduced to a pure gauge SU(2) field. In this case, the spin-orbit coupling can be removed by a gauge transformation in the form of a local SU(2) spin rotation. The resulting spin dynamics is exactly described in terms of two kinetic coefficients: the spin diffusion and electron mobility. After the inverse transformation, full diffusive and precessional spin density dynamics, including the anisotropic spin relaxation, formation of stable spin structures, and spin precession induced by a macroscopic current are restored. Explicit solutions of the spin evolution equations are found for the initially uniform spin density and for stable, nonuniform structures. Our analysis demonstrates a universal relation between the spin relaxation rate and spin-diffusion coefficient.     

Bistability and steady-state spin squeezing in diamond nanostructures controlled by a nanomechanical resonator

As the quantum states of nitrogen vacancy (NV) center can be coherently manipulated and obtained at room temperature, it is important to generate steady-state spin squeezing in spin qubits associated with NV impurities in diamond. With this task we consider a new type of a hybrid magneto-nano-electromechanical resonator, the functionality of which is based on a magnetic-field induced deflection of an appropriate cantilever that oscillates between NV spins in diamond. We show that there is bistability and spin squeezing state due to the presence of the microwave field, despite the damping from mechanical damping. Moreover, we find that bistability and spin squeezing can be controlled by the microwave field and the parameter V_z$V_z$. Our scheme may have the potential application on spin clocks, magnetometers, and other measurements based on spin–spin system in diamond nanostructures.     

The effect of inertia on the Dirac electron,the spin Hall current and the momentum space Berry curvature

We have studied the spin dependent force and the associated momentum space Berry curvature in an accelerating system. The results are derived by taking into consideration the non-relativistic limit of a generally covariant Dirac equation with an electromagnetic field present, where the methodology of the Foldy–Wouthuysen transformation is applied to achieve the non-relativistic limit. Spin currents appear due to the combined action of the external electric field, the crystal field and the induced inertial electric field via the total effective spin–orbit interaction. In an accelerating frame, the crucial role of momentum space Berry curvature in the spin dynamics has also been addressed from the perspective of spin Hall conductivity. For time dependent acceleration, the expression for the spin polarization has been derived.     

Spin-dependent delay time and Hartman effect in asymmetrical graphene barrier under strain

We study the spin-dependent tunneling time, including group delay and dwell time, in a graphene based asymmetrical barrier with Rashba spin–orbit interaction in the presence of strain, sandwiched between two normal leads. We find that the spin-dependent tunneling time can be efficiently tuned by the barrier width, and the bias voltage. Moreover, for the zigzag direction strain although the oscillation period of the dwell time does not change, the oscillation amplitude increases by increasing the incident electron angle. It is found that for the armchair direction strain unlike the zigzag direction the group delay time at the normal incidence depends on the spin state of electrons and Hartman effect can be observed. In addition, for the armchair direction strain the spin polarization increases with increasing the RSOI strength and the bias voltage. The magnitude and sign of spin polarization can be manipulated by strain. In particular, by applying an external electric field the efficiency of the spin polarization is improved significantly in strained graphene, and a fully spin-polarized current is generated.     

Hyperfine interaction-dominated dynamics of nuclear spins in self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots

We measure the dynamics of nuclear spins in a single-electron charged self-assembled InGaAs quantum dot with negligible nuclear spin diffusion due to dipole-dipole interaction and identify two distinct mechanisms responsible for the decay of the Overhauser field. We attribute a temperature-independent decay lasting ～100 sec at 5 T to intradot diffusion induced by hyperfine-mediated indirect nuclear spin interaction. By repeated polarization of the nuclear spins, this diffusion induced partial decay can be suppressed. We also observe a gate voltage and temperature-dependent decay stemming from cotunneling mediated nuclear spin flips that can be prolonged to ～30 h by adjusting the gate voltage and lowering the temperature to ～200 mK. Our measurements indicate possibilities for exploring quantum dynamics of the central spin model.     

Spin transport and relaxation in graphene

We review our recent work on spin injection, transport and relaxation in graphene. The spin injection and transport in single layer graphene (SLG) were investigated using nonlocal magnetoresistance (MR) measurements. Spin injection was performed using either transparent contacts (Co/SLG) or tunneling contacts (Co/MgO/SLG). With tunneling contacts, the nonlocal MR was increased by a factor of ∼1000 and the spin injection/detection efficiency was greatly enhanced from ∼1% (transparent contacts) to ∼30%. Spin relaxation was investigated on graphene spin valves using nonlocal Hanle measurements. For transparent contacts, the spin lifetime was in the range of 50-100 ps. The effects of surface chemical doping showed that for spin lifetimes in the order of 100 ps, charged impurity scattering (Au) was not the dominant mechanism for spin relaxation. While using tunneling contacts to suppress the contact-induced spin relaxation, we observed the spin lifetimes as long as 771 ps at room temperature, 1.2 ns at 4 K in SLG, and 6.2 ns at 20 K in bilayer graphene (BLG). Furthermore, contrasting spin relaxation behaviors were observed in SLG and BLG. We found that Elliot-Yafet spin relaxation dominated in SLG at low temperatures whereas Dyakonov-Perel spin relaxation dominated in BLG at low temperatures. Gate tunable spin transport was studied using the SLG property of gate tunable conductivity and incorporating different types of contacts (transparent and tunneling contacts). Consistent with theoretical predictions, the nonlocal MR was proportional to the SLG conductivity for transparent contacts and varied inversely with the SLG conductivity for tunneling contacts. Finally, bipolar spin transport in SLG was studied and an electron-hole asymmetry was observed for SLG spin valves with transparent contacts, in which nonlocal MR was roughly independent of DC bias current for electrons, but varied significantly with DC bias current for holes. These results are very important for the use of graphene for spin-based logic and information storage applications.     

在CP MAS NMR中测量质子自旋扩散速率的方法

自旋扩散在固体核磁共振的许多现象中都起着非常重要的作用。现有几种理论方案以估算扩散系数。然而在实践中这种估算既不实际也不可靠。本文提出了确定自旋扩散速率的新方案,它利用的是CP MAS NMR中的稀核退极化规律。带质子的稀核磁化矢量在退极化中表现出两个阶段,慢衰减的第二阶段是单一指数过程,它提供了自旋扩散速率的直接度量。自旋扩散实质上是极化转移的一种宏观表现形式,这种转移通过一系列成对自旋的flip-flop进行,可以用一维随机走步模型描述。从退磁过程半对数曲线的斜率可以求得平均flip-flop时间。自旋扩散系数可以由此估算。在一些典型的刚性有机固体和结晶高分子聚合物中,求得平均flip-flop的时间是700微秒左右。它比偶极相关时间大一个数量级。这意味着,自旋扩散时间常数与自旋—自旋弛豫时间常数是很不相同的,虽然这两个相应过程虽密切相关的。由质子线宽估计自旋扩散系数是不可靠的。     

Correction of spin diffusion during iterative automated NOE assignment

Indirect magnetization transfer increases the observed nuclear Overhauser enhancement (NOE) between two protons in many cases, leading to an underestimation of target distances. Wider distance bounds are necessary to account for this error. However, this leads to a loss of information and may reduce the quality of the structures generated from the inter-proton distances. Although several methods for spin diffusion correction have been published, they are often not employed to derive distance restraints. This prompted us to write a user-friendly and CPU-efficient method to correct for spin diffusion that is fully integrated in our program ambiguous restraints for iterative assignment (ARIA). ARIA thus allows automated iterative NOE assignment and structure calculation with spin diffusion corrected distances. The method relies on numerical integration of the coupled differential equations which govern relaxation by matrix squaring and sparse matrix techniques. We derive a correction factor for the distance restraints from calculated NOE volumes and inter-proton distances. To evaluate the impact of our spin diffusion correction, we tested the new calibration process extensively with data from the Pleckstrin homology (PH) domain of Mus musculus beta-spectrin. By comparing structures refined with and without spin diffusion correction, we show that spin diffusion corrected distance restraints give rise to structures of higher quality (notably fewer NOE violations and a more regular Ramachandran map). Furthermore, spin diffusion correction permits the use of tighter error bounds which improves the distinction between signal and noise in an automated NOE assignment scheme.     

Effect of temperature,electric and magnetic field on spin relaxation in single layer graphene: A Monte Carlo simulation study

In this article, we employ the semiclassical Monte Carlo approach to study the spin polarized electron transport in single layer graphene channel. The Monte Carlo method can treat non-equilibrium carrier transport and effects of external electric and magnetic fields on carrier transport can be incorporated in the formalism. Graphene is the ideal material for spintronics application due to very low Spin Orbit Interaction. Spin relaxation in graphene is caused by D'yakonov-Perel (DP) relaxation and Elliott-Yafet (EY) relaxation. We study effect of electron electron scattering, temperature, magnetic field and driving electric field on spin relaxation length in single layer graphene. We have considered injection polarization along z-direction which is perpendicular to the plane of graphene and the magnitude of ensemble averaged spin variation is studied along the x-direction which is the transport direction. This theoretical investigation is particularly important in order to identify the factors responsible for experimentally observed spin relaxation length in graphene.     

铁磁、肖特基金属和半导体纳米自旋过滤器中的量子尺寸效应

采用转移矩阵法,研究了结构尺度对自旋过滤器中电子自旋极化特性的影响．该自旋过滤器可以通过在半导体异质结上沉积纳米尺度的铁磁条带和肖特基金属条带来实现．计算结果表明,电子的自旋极化特性强烈依赖于铁磁条带和肖特基金属条带的结构尺度和位置,即该器件中存在量子尺寸效应．此外,我们的计算结果还表明,电子的自旋极化特性还与施加在肖特基金属条上的电压所诱发的电垒高度密切相关．因此,我们可以通过改变施加在肖特基金属条上的电压来调控该器件中电子的自旋极化特性,制造一个电压可调的电子自旋过滤器．     

Thermally driven pure spin current through an interacting quantum dot

We study spin-dependent electron transport properties of a thermally driven interacting quantum dot. When an external magnetic field is applied to the quantum dot, the effective transmissions of spin-up and spin-down electrons are separated from each other and have a perfect mirror symmetry with respect to the incident energy at a certain gate voltage. A pure spin current can be induced in the system and modulated by a magnetic field. Under certain magnetic field strengths, a larger pure spin current can be obtained at gate voltages with the values in a range, not just at a specific voltage. These results indicate that the system can be worked as a pure spin current generator.