Carsten Timm

Spin amplification, reading, and writing in transport through anisotropic magnetic molecules

Inelastic transport through a single magnetic molecule weakly coupled to metallic leads is studied theoretically. We consider dynamical processes that are relevant for writing, storing, and reading spin information in molecular memory devices. Magnetic anisotropy is found to be crucial for slow spin relaxation. In the presence of anisotropy we find giant spin amplification: The spin accumulated in the leads if a bias voltage is applied to a molecule prepared in a spin-polarized state can be made exponentially large in a characteristic energy divided by temperature. For one ferromagnetic and one paramagnetic lead the molecular spin can be reversed by applying a bias voltage even in the absence of a magnetic field. We propose schemes for reading and writing spin information based on our findings.

Tunnelling spectra of individual magnetic endofullerene molecules

The manipulation of single magnetic molecules may enable new strategies for high-density information storage and quantum-state control. However, progress in these areas depends on developing techniques for addressing individual molecules and controlling their spin. Here, we report success in making electrical contact to individual magnetic N@C(60) molecules and measuring spin excitations in their electron tunnelling spectra. We verify that the molecules remain magnetic by observing a transition as a function of magnetic field that changes the spin quantum number and also the existence of non-equilibrium tunnelling originating from low-energy excited states. From the tunnelling spectra, we identify the charge and spin states of the molecule. The measured spectra can be reproduced theoretically by accounting for the exchange interaction between the nitrogen spin and electron(s) on the C(60) cage.

Disorder effects in diluted magnetic semiconductors

Diluted magnetic semiconductors (DMS) are promising materials for technological applications as well as interesting from the basic-physics point of view. It has become clear that disorder plays a crucial role in DMS due to the presence of many charged defects and the random positions of impurity spins. In this paper the effect of disorder on transport properties and magnetism in DMS is discussed. It is argued that the impurity positions are correlated due to strong Coulomb interactions between charged defects. These correlations are crucial for the understanding of magnetic properties and the observed metal-insulator transition.

Transport through anisotropic magnetic molecules with partially ferromagnetic leads: Spin- charge conversion and negative differential conductance

We theoretically investigate inelastic transport through anisotropic magnetic molecules weakly coupled to one ferromagnetic and one nonmagnetic lead. We find that the current is suppressed over wide voltage ranges due to spin blockade. In this system, spin blockade is associated with successive spin flips of the molecular spin and depends on the anisotropy energy barrier. This leads to the appearance of a window of bias voltages between the Coulomb blockade and spin blockade regimes where the current is large and to negative differential conductance. Remarkably, negative differential conductance is also present close to room temperature. Spin-blockade behavior is accompanied by super-Poissonian shot noise, such as in nonmagnetic quantum dots. Finally, we show that the charge transmitted through the molecule between initial preparation in a certain spin state and infinite time strongly depends on the initial spin state in certain parameter ranges. Thus the molecule can act as a spin-charge converter, an effect potentially useful as a read-out mechanism for molecular spintronics.

Quantum Monte Carlo simulation of thin magnetic films

The stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo method is used to study thin ferromagnetic films, described by a Heisenberg model including local anisotropies. The magnetization curve is calculated, and the results compared to Schwinger boson and many-body Greens function calculations. A transverse field is introduced in order to study the reorientation effect, in which the magnetization changes from out of plane to in plane. Since the approximate theoretical approaches above differ significantly from each other, and the Monte Carlo method is free of systematic errors, the calculation provides an unbiased check of the approximate treatments. By studying quantum spin models with local anisotropies, varying spin size, and a transverse field, we also demonstrate the general applicability of the recent cluster-loop formulation of the stochastic series expansion quantum Monte Carlo method.

Types of topological surface states in nodal noncentrosymmetric superconductors

origin appear at their surface. We show that the presence of certain inversion-type lattice symmetries can give rise to additional topological features of the gap nodes, resulting in surface states forming one-dimensional arcs connecting the projections of two nodal rings. In addition, we demonstrate that Majorana surface states can appear at time-reversal-invariant momenta of the surface Brillouin zone, even when the system is not fully gapped in the bulk. Within a continuum theory we derive the topological invariants that protect these different types of zero-energy surface states. We independently derive general conditions for the existence of zero-energy surface bound states using the complementary quasiclassical scattering theory, explicitly taking into account the effectsofspin-orbitsplittingofthebands.Wecomputesurfacebound-statespectraforvariouscrystalpoint-group symmetries and orbital-angular-momentum pairing states. Finally, we examine the signatures of the arc surface states and of the zero-energy surface flat bands in tunneling-conductance spectra and dicuss how topological phase transitions in noncentrosymmetric superconductors could be observed in experiments.

Correlated Defects, Metal-Insulator Transition, and Magnetic Order in Ferromagnetic Semiconductors

The effect of disorder on transport and magnetization in ferromagnetic III-V semiconductors, in particular (Ga,Mn)As, is studied theoretically. We show that Coulomb-induced correlations of the defect positions are crucial for the transport and magnetic properties of these highly compensated materials. We employ Monte Carlo simulations to obtain the correlated defect distributions. Exact diagonalization gives reasonable results for the spectrum of valence-band holes and the metal-insulator transition only for correlated disorder. Finally, we show that the mean-field magnetization also depends crucially on defect correlations.

Cotunneling and nonequilibrium magnetization in magnetic molecular monolayers

Transport and nonequilibrium magnetization in monolayers of magnetic molecules subject to a bias voltage are considered. We apply a master-equation approach going beyond the sequential-tunneling approximation to study the Coulomb-blockade regime. While the current is very small in this case, the magnetization shows changes of the order of the saturation magnetization for small variations of the bias voltage. Inelastic cotunneling processes manifest themselves as differential-conductance steps, which are accompanied by much larger changes in the magnetization. In addition, the magnetization in the Coulomb-blockade regime exhibits strong signatures of sequential tunneling processes deexciting molecular states populated by inelastic cotunneling. We also consider the case of a single molecule, finding that cotunneling processes lead to the occurrence of magnetic sidebands below the Coulomb-blockade threshold. In the context of molecular electronics, we study how additional spin relaxation suppresses the fine structure in transport and magnetization.

Theory for transport through a single magnetic molecule: Endohedral N @ C 60

We consider transport through a single

Doping dependence of the Neel temperature in mott-hubbard antiferromagnets: effect of vortices

\mathrm{N}@{\mathrm{C}}_{60}