Magnetic Sensitive Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

Abstract

The scanning tunneling microscope is capable of studying magnetism at surfaces down to the atomic scale. Using spin‐polarized tips even complex magnetic ground states of surfaces and nanostructures can be revealed. The technique of spinpolarized scanning tunneling microscopy can also be applied to study the switching of individual (super)paramagnetic objects as a function of temperature or magnetic field and recently it has been shown that the magnetic state of nanoscale objects can also be manipulated. In addition one can study magnetic excitations by employing spin excitation spectroscopy and thereby deduce the spin, the anisotropy, the type and strength of magnetic coupling and even relaxation times of single atoms or small clusters. Combining these techniques with atom manipulation provides access to fundamental magnetic phenomena on the atomic scale.

Magnetic imaging with polarized soft x-rays

“…-Magnetic scanning probe microscopies: This category spans probably the largest range [6]. It encompasses Spin polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscopy [7], [8], which allows not only to image spin textures at nearly atomic resolution [9], but has recently been able to expand in the time domain so as to study e.g. fast electron spin relaxation times occurring in the ns regime [10].…”