Circularly polarized light emission in scanning tunneling microscopy of magnetic systems

Article

关键词: DICHROISM;    METAL;    FE;    FLUORESCENCE;    SUBSTRATE;    FILMS;    CO;   

DOI  :  10.1103/PhysRevB.61.3534

来源: SCIE

【 摘 要 】

Light is produced when a scanning tunneling microscope is used to probe a metal surface. Recent experiments on cobalt utilizing a tungsten tip found that the light is circularly polarized; the sense of circular polarization depends on the direction of the sample magnetization, and the degree of polarization is of order 10%. This raises the possibility of constructing a magnetic microscope with very good spatial resolution. We present a theory of this effect for iron and cobalt and find a degree of polarization of order 0.1%. This is in disagreement with the experiments on cobalt as well as previous theoretical work; which found order of magnitude agreement with the experimental results. However, a recent experiment on iron showed 0.0 +/- 2%. We predict that the use of a silver tip would increase the degree of circular polarization for a range of photon energies.

【 授权许可】

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