Interview for Faculty Position

Spin manipulation in atomically engineered nanostructures

Alexander Otte

NIST

The ability to address and control individual atomic spin states is of great interest for fundamental scientific as well as technological reasons. Inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy (IETS) has developed over the past few years as a powerful technique to probe an atomic spin and, through observation of its unique set of excitations, gain unprecedented insight into the spins exact configuration. We will review this technique and focus on three areas of interest: the study of magnetic anisotropy [1] (which is of great importance for magnetic data storage purposes), the investigation of electron correlation effects [2], and the challenge of writing an atomic bit through controlled spin-transfer. These form the ingredients for future research on magnetic nanostructures that are assembled literally atom-by-atom.

[1] C. F. Hirjibehedin et al., Science 317, 1199 (2007)
[2] A. F. Otte et al., Nature Physics 4, 847 (2008)