PIER Photon Science Colloquium: Exploring magnetism one atom at a time

by Sebastian Loth (Center for Free-Electron Laser Science, Hamburg; Max-Planck Institut für Festkörperforschung, Stuttgart)

Friday 1 Feb 2013, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Berlin

CFEL (Lecture Hall, Bldg. 99) (DESY Hamburg)

Magnetic materials consist of atoms that interact very locally – often on atomic length scales. In nanoscopic systems the details of these interactions become increasingly important. We use scanning tunneling microscopy to test how far classical concepts of magnetism can be extended into the nanoworld and how they emerge from the quantum mechanical behavior of individual spins. I will introduce the new STM lab that we are currently completing at CFEL. We combine electronic pump-probe spectroscopy methods with scanning probes to achieve micro-electronvolt energy resolution and nanosecond time resolution on individual nanostructures. With this technique we identified a new route to create stable magnetic states using antiferromagnetic spin-spin interaction. This enabled a model demonstration of dense magnetic memory with only 12 atoms per bit (Science 335 196, 2012).