No Arabic abstract
We present an extension of the relativistic electron transport theory for the standard (charge) conductivity tensor of random alloys within the tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital method to the so-called spin-dependent conductivity tensor, which describes the Kubo linear response of spin currents to external electric fields. The approach is based on effective charge- and spin-current operators, that correspond to intersite electron transport and that are nonrandom, which simplifies the configuration averaging by means of the coherent potential approximation. Special attention is paid to the Fermi sea term of the spin-dependent conductivity tensor, which contains a nonzero incoherent part, in contrast to the standard conductivity tensor. The developed formalism is applied to the spin Hall effect in binary random nonmagnetic alloys, both on a model level and for Pt-based alloys with an fcc structure. We show that the spin Hall conductivity consists of three contributions (one intrinsic and two extrinsic) which exhibit different concentration dependences in the dilute limit of an alloy. Results for selected Pt alloys (Pt-Re, Pt-Ta) lead to the spin Hall angles around 0.2; these sizable values are obtained for compositions that belong to thermodynamically equilibrium phases. These alloys can thus be considered as an alternative to other systems for efficient charge to spin conversion, which are often metastable crystalline or amorphous alloys.
Relativistic band theoretical calculations reveal that intrinsic spin Hall conductivity in hole-doped archetypical semiconductors Ge, GaAs and AlAs is large $[sim 100 (hbar/e)(Omega cm)^{-1}]$, showing the possibility of spin Hall effect beyond the four band Luttinger Hamiltonian. The calculated orbital-angular-momentum (orbital) Hall conductivity is one order of magnitude smaller, indicating no cancellation between the spin and orbital Hall effects in bulk semiconductors. Furthermore, it is found that the spin Hall effect can be strongly manipulated by strains, and that the $ac$ spin Hall conductivity in the semiconductors is large in pure as well as doped semiconductors.
We have measured the inverse spin Hall effect (ISHE) in textit{n}-Ge at room temperature. The spin current in germanium was generated by spin pumping from a CoFeB/MgO magnetic tunnel junction in order to prevent the impedance mismatch issue. A clear electromotive force was measured in Ge at the ferromagnetic resonance of CoFeB. The same study was then carried out on several test samples, in particular we have investigated the influence of the MgO tunnel barrier and sample annealing on the ISHE signal. First, the reference CoFeB/MgO bilayer grown on SiO$_{2}$ exhibits a clear electromotive force due to anisotropic magnetoresistance and anomalous Hall effect which is dominated by an asymmetric contribution with respect to the resonance field. We also found that the MgO tunnel barrier is essential to observe ISHE in Ge and that sample annealing systematically lead to an increase of the signal. We propose a theoretical model based on the presence of localized states at the interface between the MgO tunnel barrier and Ge to account for these observations. Finally, all of our results are fully consistent with the observation of ISHE in heavily doped $n$-Ge and we could estimate the spin Hall angle at room temperature to be $approx$0.001.
We present an ab initio theory of the Gilbert damping in substitutionally disordered ferromagnetic alloys. The theory rests on introduced nonlocal torques which replace traditional local torque operators in the well-known torque-correlation formula and which can be formulated within the atomic-sphere approximation. The formalism is sketched in a simple tight-binding model and worked out in detail in the relativistic tight-binding linear muffin-tin orbital (TB-LMTO) method and the coherent potential approximation (CPA). The resulting nonlocal torques are represented by nonrandom, non-site-diagonal and spin-independent matrices, which simplifies the configuration averaging. The CPA-vertex corrections play a crucial role for the internal consistency of the theory and for its exact equivalence to other first-principles approaches based on the random local torques. This equivalence is also illustrated by the calculated Gilbert damping parameters for binary NiFe and FeCo random alloys, for pure iron with a model atomic-level disorder, and for stoichiometric FePt alloys with a varying degree of L10 atomic long-range order.
We report a giant spin Hall effect (SHE) in {beta}-Ta that generates spin currents intense enough to induce efficient spin-transfer-torque switching of ferromagnets, thereby providing a new approach for controlling magnetic devices that can be superior to existing technologies. We quantify this SHE by three independent methods and demonstrate spin-torque (ST) switching of both out-of-plane and in-plane magnetized layers. We implement a three-terminal device that utilizes current passing through a low impedance Ta-ferromagnet bilayer to effect switching of a nanomagnet, with a higher-impedance magnetic tunnel junction for read-out. The efficiency and reliability of this device, together with its simplicity of fabrication, suggest that this three-terminal SHE-ST design can eliminate the main obstacles currently impeding the development of magnetic memory and non-volatile spin logic technologies.
An archetypical spin-glass metallic alloy, Cu0.83Mn0.17, is studied by means of an ab-initio based approach. First-principles calculations are employed to obtain effective chemical, strain-induced and magnetic exchange interactions, as well as static atomic displacements, and the interactions are subsequently used in thermodynamic simulations. It is shown that the calculated atomic and magnetic short-range order accurately reproduces the results of neutron-scattering experiments. In particular, it is confirmed that the alloy exhibits a tendency toward ordering and the corresponding ordered phase is revealed. The magnetic structure is represented by spin-spiral clusters accompanied by weaker ferromagnetic short-range correlations. The spin-glass transition temperature obtained in Monte Carlo simulations by a finite-size scaling technique, 57 K, is in reasonable agreement with experimental data, 78 K.