The tunneling characteristics of planar junctions between a normal metal and a non-centrosymmetric superconductor like CePt3Si are examined. It is shown that the superconducting phase with mixed parity can give rise to characteristic zero-bias anomalies in certain junction directions. The origin of these zero-bias anomalies are Andreev bound states at the interface. The tunneling characteristics for different directions allow to test the structure of the parity-mixed pairing state.

The exchange bias shift of the hysteresis loop, H E , in antiferromagnetic/ferromagnetic layer systems can be easily controlled ͑within certain limits͒ by cooling in zero field from different magnetization states above the antiferromagnetic Néel temperature, T N. This indicates that for moderate cooling fields, H E is determined by the magnetization state of the ferromagnet at T N , and not by the strength of the cooling field.

The initial growth of Co on Cu͑001͒ is atomically identified by scanning tunneling microscopy using CO titration and density-functional theory total-energy calculations. Both reveal that at low coverage Co adatoms occupy substitutional sites in the Cu substrate surface that act as pinning centers for subsequent island nucleation. The interaction with diffusing adatoms is found to be attractive and stronger for nearest-neighbor Co compared to Cu. The atomic substitution process actuates a bimodal growth mode as experimentally found in the island size distributions. This gives rise to a high density of small Co islands and large Co-decorated Cu islands. ͓S0163-1829͑99͒08943-2͔

The magnetic anisotropy of Co/Cu͑001͒ films has been investigated by the magneto-optical Kerr effect, both in the pseudomorphic growth regime and above the critical thickness where strain relaxation sets in. A clear correlation between the onset of strain relaxation-as measured by means of reflection high-energy electron diffraction-and changes of the magnetic anisotropy has been found.