Exchange interaction between magnetic adatoms on surfaces of noble metals

Abstract

We present first principles calculations of the exchange interactions between magnetic impurities deposited on (001), (110) and (111) surfaces of Cu and Au and analyze them, in particular, in the asymptotic regime. For the (110) and the (111) surfaces we demonstrate that the interaction shows an oscillatory behavior as a function of the distance, R, of the impurities and that the amplitude of the oscillations decays as 1/R^2. Furthermore, the frequency of the oscillations is closely related to the length of the Fermi vector of the surface states existing on these surfaces. Due to the asymmetry of the the surface states' dispersion, the frequency of the oscillations becomes also asymmetric on the (110) surfaces, while on the Au(111) surface two distinct frequencies are found in the oscillations as a consequence of the Bychkov-Rashba splitting of the surface states. Remarkably, no long range oscillations of the exchange interaction are observed for the (001) surfaces where the surface states are unoccupied. When burying the impurities beneath the surface layer, oscillations mediated by the bulk states become visible.

6 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Exchange interaction between single magnetic adatoms
• First principles calculation of spin-interactions and magnetic ground states of Cr trimers on Au(111)
• Theory of anisotropic Rashba splitting of surface states

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Exploring the phase diagram of the two-impurity Kondo problem
• Magnetic Coupling and Single-Ion Anisotropy in Surface-Supported Mn-based Metal-Organic Networks
• Non-locally sensing the magnetic states of nanoscale antiferromagnets with an atomic spin sensor
• Non-equilibrium magnetic interactions in strongly correlated systems
• Response of the Shockley surface state to an external electrical field: A density-functional theory study of Cu(111)
• Quantum Engineered Kondo Lattices
• Magnetism between magnetic adatoms on monolayer NbSe${}_2$
• Non-perturbative effects and indirect exchange interaction between quantum impurities on metallic (111) surfaces
• Substrate-Controlled Magnetism: Fe nanowires on vicinal Cu surfaces