Colloquium: The Brief But Fascinating History of Silicon Spin Chains

Datum

27.08.2018

Zeit

16:30 - 17:30

Sprecher

Dr. Steven Erwin

Zugehörigkeit

Naval Research Laboratory Center for Computational Materials Science, Washington, USA

Serie

MPI-PKS Kolloquium

Sprache

en

Hauptthema

Physik

Andere Themen

Physik

Beschreibung

Thirty years ago, scientists first observed that when a small amount of gold is deposited on the surface of silicon, both the gold and silicon atoms automatically organize themselves into parallel linear rows, so-called "atom chains", with nearly perfect structural order. This observation marked the beginning of a new research direction in which theoretical predictions about "physics in one dimension" could now be investigated experimentally using the standard tools of surface science such as scanning tunneling microscopy, x-ray diffraction, and photoemission. A particularly striking discovery, first reported ten years ago, was that at low temperature the silicon chains can develop local magnetic moments, which form regular highly ordered, periodic patterns. These "silicon spin chains" have now become the main focus of this research field. This talk will describe three recent theoretical and experimental aspects of silicon spin chains: the possibility of magnetic ordering in these one-dimensional systems; the prospects for using surface chemistry to tailor spin chains by creating or destroying individual spins; and the properties and dynamics of solitons in the spin chains.

Letztmalig verändert: 27.08.2018, 02:08:53