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Visualizing Uniaxial-strain Manipulation of Antiferromagnetic Domains in Fe1+YTe Using a Spin-polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscope
Published on: March 24, 2019
Parity effect in the ground state localization of antiferromagnetic chains coupled to a ferromagnet
Simon Holzberger1, Tobias Schuh1, Stefan Blügel2
1Physikalisches Institut, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Wolfgang-Gaede-Strasse 1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany.
Abstract:
We investigate the ground states of antiferromagnetic Mn nanochains on Ni(110) by spin-polarized scanning tunneling microscopy in combination with theory. While the ferrimagnetic linear trimer experimentally shows the predicted collinear classical ground state, no magnetic contrast was observed for dimers and tetramers where noncollinear structures were expected based on ab initio theory. This striking observation can be explained by zero-point energy motion for even-numbered chains derived within a classical equation of motion leading to nonclassical ground states. Thus, depending on the parity of the chain length, the system shows a classical or a quantum behavior.
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