2017/08/01 by J. Ibañez-Azpiroz, M. dos Santos Dias, S. Blügel +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mes-hall
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevb.96.144410
published as Phys. Rev. B 96, 144410 (2017) · 11 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2017/08/01 · arxiv updated 2017/10/11
We present a systematic ab initio investigation of the longitudinal and transverse spin relaxation times of magnetic single adatoms deposited on metallic substrates. Our analysis based on time-dependent density functional theory shows that the longitudinal time, T∥, is of order femtosecond while the transverse time, T⊥, is of order picosecond, i.e. T⊥≫ T∥. This comes as a consequence of the different energy scales of the corresponding processes: T∥ involves spin-density excitations of order eV, while T⊥ is governed by atomic spin-excitations of order meV. Comparison to available inelastic scanning tunneling spectroscopy dI/dV experimental curves shows that the order of magnitude of T⊥ agrees well with our results. Regarding T∥, the time scale calculated here is several orders of magnitude faster than what has been measured up to now; we therefore propose that an ultrafast laser pulse measuring technique is required in order to access the ultrafast spin-dynamics described in this work.