Colloquium: The Brief But Fascinating History of Silicon Spin Chains

Date

Aug 27, 2018

Time

4:30 PM - 5:30 PM

Speaker

Dr. Steven Erwin

Affiliation

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

Series

MPI-PKS Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Description

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.

Last modified: Aug 27, 2018, 2:08:53 AM