Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bryant, Benjamin
• Toskovic, Ranko
• Ferrón, Alejandro
• Lado, José L
• Spinelli, Anna
• Fernández-Rossier, Joaquín
• Otte, Alexander F

Titel

Controlled Complete Suppression of Single-Atom Inelastic Spin and Orbital Cotunneling

Ist Teil von

• Nano letters, 2015-10, Vol.15 (10), p.6542-6546

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Chemical Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The inelastic portion of the tunnel current through an individual magnetic atom grants unique access to read out and change the atom’s spin state, but it also provides a path for spontaneous relaxation and decoherence. Controlled closure of the inelastic channel would allow for the latter to be switched off at will, paving the way to coherent spin manipulation in single atoms. Here, we demonstrate complete closure of the inelastic channels for both spin and orbital transitions due to a controlled geometric modification of the atom’s environment, using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). The observed suppression of the excitation signal, which occurs for Co atoms assembled into chains on a Cu2N substrate, indicates a structural transition affecting the d z 2 orbital, effectively cutting off the STM tip from the spin-flip cotunneling path.